'e!org/detairs/feminineinfluenc60thomrich 


Feminine  Influence 
on  the  Poets 


By  the  Same  Author 

REST  AND  UNREST 
ROSE  ACRE  PAPERS 
THE  SOUTH  COUNTRY 
THE  HEART  OF  ENGLAND 
LIFE  OF  RICHARD  JEFFERIES 
Etc. 


c^,Z^x6^2^  /^e^n^i^'^iy  ^d^x^^^^a^iy^ 


/^il^  fa/n 


Feminine  Influence 
on  the  Poets 

By 

Edward  Thomas 


New  Yprk 

John  I,ane  Company 
1911 


TO 
A.  MARTIN  FREEMAN 


Contents 

I.  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY  "7 

II.  WOMEN  AND  INSPIRATION  i8 

III.  WOMEN  AS  POETS  49. 

IV.  WOMEN,  NATURE  AND  POETRY  65 
V.  PASSION  AND  POETRY  91 

VI.  MOTHERS  OF  POETS                  ^  120 

VIL  POETS  AND  FRIENDLY  WOMEN  135 

VIII.  THE  TENTH  MUSE  228 

IX.  PATRONESSES  332 


List  of  Illustrations 

LADY  VENETIA  DIGBY 

From  the  Painting  by  Vandyke 

MARY  SIDNEY,  COUNTESS  OF  PEMBROKE 

From  the  Portrait  by  Mark  Gerards 

MRS.  COWPER 

From  the  Portrait  by  D.  Heins 

DOROTHY  SIDNEY,  COUNTESS  OF  SUNDERLAND 

From  the  Portrait  by  Vandyke 


Frontispiece 

Facing  page   ^O 

„         128 

272 


chapter  One:  The  Inspiration  of 
Poetry 

'*  ■  ^Y  Heaven,"  says  Biron  in  "Love's 
■^  Labour's  Lost/'  *'  I  do  love  ;  and  it 
-■— ^  hath  taught  me  to  rhyme  and  to  be 
melancholy."  By  far  the  greatest  part  of 
the  influence  of  women  upon  poetry  has 
hitherto  been  of  the  unconscious  kind  ;  they 
have  been  the  subject  and  the  inspiration  of 
many  poems.  In  civilisations  where  the  con- 
scious intelligence  of  men  treated  women  as 
altogether  inferior,  this  was  the  only  direct 
influence  possible.  In  Greece,  for  example, 
it  is  clear  that  man  saw  in  woman  **  no  other 
end  than  to  minister  to  his  pleasure  or  to 
become  the  mother  of  his  children."  It  is  also 
clear  that  there  must  have  been  women  to  help 
Euripides  to  the  liberal  view  expressed  in  the 
"Medea"  and  the  "Alcestis,"  to  his  sym- 
pathy with  "  the  dumb  and  age-long  protest 
of  the  weaker  against  the  stronger  sex " : 
who  they  were  we  shall  never  know.  The 
position  of  women  was  not  better  in  Rome, 
though  here  as  everywhere,  and  at  all  times,  a 
woman  of  magical  or  grand  character  could 
make  her  own  world.  The  Roman  father  had 
the  right  to  marry  his  daughter  against  her 
will  and  then  to  dissolve  her  marriage  and 
take   her    away   from    husband,   child,    and 

A  { 


;/:F;ei3Sihm\e!I^  on  the  Poets 

home.  Christianity  did  little  for  women 
unless  by  an  occasional  resurgence  of  its 
democratic  tendency.  Asceticism  and  the 
exaltation  of  virginity  smeared  marriage  with 
some  contempt.  Woman  was  the  ''  door  of 
hell  "  and  *'  mother  of  all  human  ills  "  to  the 
Fathers ;  and  she  was  forbidden,  says  Lecky, 
to  receive  the  Eucharist  into  her  naked  hands 
on  account  of  her  impurity.  Nor  does  it 
appear  certain  that  the  worship  of  the  Virgin 
Mother  did  much  for  women  who  could  not 
become  mothers  without  losing  their  virginity. 
The  conditions  of  life  were  so  harsh  that  an 
unearthly  ideal  may  have  been  a  necessary 
luxury,  but  undoubtedly  the  grass  was  not 
made  to  grow  by  contemplation  of  the  stars. 
The  living  women  of  the  Middle  Ages  could 
only  gain  power  by  separation  from  men  in 
a  monastic  life,  because  in  the  contact  of 
ordinary  life  they  suffered  by  physical  in- 
feriority and  lack  of  freedom. 

It  is  not  easy  to  exaggerate  the  misfortune 
of  women  under  these  conditions,  because  the 
evidence  is  practically  all  from  men.  Count- 
less voices  come  to  us  out  of  the  dark,  but 
very  few  of  the  cries  are  from  women.  On 
the  other  hand  it  is  likely  that  men,  with  the 
exclusive  power  of  the  pen,  would  under- 
estimate or  understate  the  powers  of  women. 
But  great  at  all  times  those  powers  must  have 
2 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry0^^i^^5 

been.  Their  legal  and  physical  inferiority 
kept  women  down,  but  it  kept  them  also 
together.  They  became  a  race  apart.  They 
were,  in  the  words  of  Euripides,  *'a  race  well 
inclined  to  one  another,  and  most  safe  in 
keeping  secret  matters  of  common  interest." 
Women  are  still  a  race  apart.  They  are 
foreigners,  their  world  is  another  world,  ever 
at  hand,  ever  unavoidable,  ever  mysterious  ; 
and  through  this  world  is  a  man's  nearest  path 
to  the  strangeness  of  things.  This  is  no  small 
portion  of  their  influence ;  and  it  must  have 
been  larger  in  Greece  and  Rome  where  men, 
no  matter  how  superior,  were  yet  born  of 
women  and  trained  by  women.  Pindar  had 
his  Corinna  to  instruct  him  in  poetry,  and 
Socrates  his  Diotima  ;  and  we  may  take  these, 
with  the  feminine  Muses  and  Sibyls,  to  be  a 
parable.  However  inferior  the  woman,  it  was 
still  sweet  to  be  under  one  cloak  with  her,  as 
the  poet  Asclepiades  has  said  :  "  Sweet  is 
snow  in  summer  for  one  athirst  to  drink,  and 
sweet  for  sailors  after  winter  to  see  the  crown 
of  spring  ;  but  most  sweet  where  one  cloak 
hides  two  lovers,  and  the  praise  of  Love  is 
told  by  both."  (MackaiFs  translation  :  '*  Select 
Epigrams  from  the  Greek  Anthology.") 
Men  in  those  days  were  rather  more  like  us 
than  sometimes  appears  through  learned 
spectacles,    if    I    may   draw   any   conclusion 

3 


;  .  Feinininc  Influence  on  the  Poets 

from  the  appropriateness  to  a  modern  oc- 
casion of  another  Greek  poet's  '*first  kiss": 

At  evening,  at  the  hour  when  we  say  good-night, 
Moeris  kissed  me,  I  know  not  whether  really  or  in  a 
dream  ;  for  very  clearly  I  now  have  the  rest  in  mind, 
all  she  said  to  me,  and  all  that  she  asked  me  of ;  but 
whether  she  has  kissed  me  too,  I  am  still  to  seek ; 
for  if  it  is  true,  how,  once  thus  rapt  to  heaven,  do  I 
go  to  and  fro  upon  earth?    (Mackail.) 

The  Greek  also  agrees  with  the  Provencal 
in  calling  the  daw^n  a  hater  of  lovers  for 
rising  so  swiftly  upon  their  couch — 

Ah  God!  Ah  God,  that  day  should  come  so 
soon ! 

It  would  not,  therefore,  be  surprising  if  a 
Greek  or  Roman  letter  were  some  day  to  be 
discovered  to  match  Byron's :  "  My  first 
dash  into  poetry  was  as  early  as  1800.  It 
was,"  he  says,  **the  ebullition  of  a  passion 
for  my  first  cousin,  Margaret  Parker,  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  of  evanescent  beings." 
/  Love  poetry  can  only  exist  where  women 
have  some  freedom  of  choice,  and  where  men 
therefore  run  the  risk  of  refusal.  When 
marriages  are  arranged,  as  in  antiquity  and 
the  Middle  Ages,  by  the  parents,  love  poems 
are  addressed  only  to  courtesans  and  to 
women  who  have  married  some  one  else. 
Accordingly,  love  poetry  has  advanced  with 

4 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

the  position  of  women,  and  in  no  branch  of 
literature  is  the  gain  upon  the  ancients  so 
positively  great  as  in  this.  Here  the  influence 
of  individual  women  is  again  and  again 
apparent.  They  give  the  impulse  and  the 
subject.  When  the  subject  changes  the 
impulse  will  remain,  and  the  influence,  though 
not  easily  definable,  is  not  the  less  grgaU-*-> 
Buckle  claimed  for  them  an  important  part  in 
the  progress  of  knowledge,  chiefly  by  en- 
couraging in  men  deductive  habits  of  thought. 
*' Unconsciously,"  he  says,  **  unconsciously, 
and  from  a  very  early  period,  there  is  estab- 
lished an  intimate  and  endearing  connection 
between  the  deductive  mind  of  the  mother 
and  the  inductive  mind  of  her  son.  The 
understanding  of  the  boy,  softened  and  yet 
elevated  by  the  understanding  of  his  mother, 
is  saved  from  that  degeneracy  towards  which 
the  mere  understanding  always  inclines  ;  it  is 
saved  from  being  too  cold,  too  matter  of  fact, 
too  prosaic."  And  not  only  is  this  relation 
to  be  found  between  mother  and  son,  but 
between  the  feminine  and  masculine  spirit  at 
large.  The  turn  of  thought  of  women,  ''  their 
habits  of  mind,  their  conversation,  their  in- 
fluence, insensibly  extending  over  the  whole 
surface  of  society,  and  frequently  penetrating 
its  intimate  structure,  have,  more  than  all 
other  things  put  together,  tended  to  raise  us 

5 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

into  an  ideal  world,  lift  us  from  the  dust  in 
which  we  are  too  prone  to  grovel,  and  develop 
in  us  those  germs  of  imagination  which  even 
the  most  sluggish  and  apathetic  under- 
standings in  some  degree  possess."  If  the 
influence  of  the^  *'  more  emotional,  more 
enthusiastic,  and  more  imaginative  "  sex  has 
been  great  upon  the  progress  of  knowledge, 
it  must  have  been  very  much  greater  upon 
poetry.  Here  was  a  more  apt  occasion  for 
the  exercise  of  that  influence  which  M.  Schure 
attributes  to  Mathilde  Wesendonck,  Cosima 
Liszt,  and  Marguerite  Albana,  Wagner's 
friends.  **  The  passion  whose  intoxication 
and  travail  they  knew,"  says  M.  Schure, 
**  translated  itself  powerfully  in  the  work  of 
the  man  beloved.  This  is  a  kind  of  spiritual 
fecundation  of  the  Eternal  Masculine  by  the 
Eternal  Feminine  which  is  one  of  the  highest 
functions  of  women."  Speaking  of  their 
intellectual  influence,  M.  Maulde  la  Clavifere 
has  said : 

You  must  not  ask  them  to  pry  and  delve  into 
the  stubborn  heart  of  things  ;  they  look  at  the  bright 
surface  and  penetrate  what  yields  to  the  touch. 
And  by  this  simple  method  they  perceive  things  that 
escape  the  microscope,  things  that  defy  analysis, 
thanks  to  an  intuitive  impressionability  which  enables 
them  to  see  rather  than  to  know,  and  which  would 
be  wholly  admirable  if  it  were  never  misused. 
Further,  they  have  a  marvellous  and  mysterious 
6 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

talent  for  expressing  their  enthusiasm ;  a  phrase 
feelingly  quoted  by  a  lady  strikes  our  mind  with  a 
quite  peculiar  force  when  we  afterwards  come  upon 
it  in  the  pages  of  a  book. 

"  God,"  said  Castiglione,  *'  is  only  seen 
through  women."  M.  Maeterlinck  has  ex- 
panded this  opinion,  saying : 

It  would  seem  that  women  are  more  largely 
swayed  by  destiny  than  ourselves.  They  submit 
to  its  decrees  with  far  more  simplicity ;  nor  is  there 
sincerity  in  the  resistance  they  offer.  They  are  still 
nearer  to  God,  and  yield  themselves  with  less  reserve 
to  the  pure  workings  of  the  mystery.  And  therefore 
is  it,  doubtless,  that  all  the  incidents  in  our  life  in 
which  they  take  part  seem  to  bring  us  nearer  to 
what  might  almost  be  the  very  fountain-head  of 
destiny.  It  is  above  all  when  by  their  side  that 
moments  come,  unexpectedly,  when  a  **  clear  pre- 
sentiment "  flashes  across  us,  a  presentiment  of  a 
life  that  does  not  always  seem  parallel  to  the  life  we 
know  of.  .  .  .  Women  are  indeed  the  veiled  sisters 
of  all  the  great  things  we  do  not  see. 

Richard  Jefferies  expresses  the  same  thing  in 
more  earthly  and  intelligible  manner  w^hen  he 
exclaims  in  *'  World's  End  "  :  '*  How^  delicious 
it  is  to  see  everything  through  the  medium 
and   in   the   company   of  a   noble  girl  just 

ripening  into  w^omanhood."  

The  influence  of  women  upon  poetry  began 
at  a  period  beyond  the  reach  of  literary  history. 
In  folk  poetry  it  was  principally  the  woman 

7 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

who  sang,  and  our  own  ballads  abound  in 
beautiful  evidence  of  this.     A  woman  sings yi 

O  waly,  waly,  but  love  be  bonnie 

A  little  time  while  it  is  new ! 
But  when  it's  auld  it  waxeth  cauld, 

And  fadeth  awa'  like  the  morning  dew, 

and  ends  : 

But  had  I  wist  before  I  kiss'd 

That  love  had  been  so  ill  to  win, 
I'd  lock  my  heart  in  a  case  o'  goud, 

And  pinn'd  it  wi'  a  siller  pin. 
Oh,  oh  !  if  my  young  babe  were  born, 

And  set  upon  the  nurse's  knee ; 
And  I  mysel'  were  dead  and  gone, 

And  the  green  grass  growing  over  me. 

A  woman  sings  ''  The  Lowlands  of  Holland," 
and  ''Fine  Flowers  in  the  Valley."  ''The 
Lament  of  the  Border  Widow  "  is  one  of  the 
bravest  of  all :  she  sews  her  knight's  sheet 
out  in  their  woodland  bower ;  she  watches 
the  corpse  alone ;  she  digs  the  grave  alone ; 
she  fills  it  in  alone — 

But  think  na  ye  my  heart  was  sair, 
When  I  laid  the  moul'  on  his  yellow  hair  ? 
O  think  na  ye  my  heart  was  wae. 
When  I  turn'd  about,  awa'  to  gae  ? 

Nae  living  man  I'll  love  again, 
Since  that  my  lovely  knight  is  slain  ; 
Wi'  ae  lock  of  his  yellow  hair 
I'll  chain  my  heart  for  evermair. 

It  is  the  woman  that  sings. 
8 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

Mr.  E.  K.  Chambers  sees  an  explanation  of 
woman^s  place  as  '*  the  characteristic  singer  " 
in  folk  poetry  in  the  fact  that  hers  are  **  the 
greater  number  of  the  more  leisured  and 
rhythmical  of  the  folk-occupations ;  and  to 
her,  the  primitive  sower  of  the  seed  and 
planter  of  herbs,  has  always  been  assigned 
the  chief  part  in  that  persistent  ritual  of 
agriculture,  at  whose  high  seasons  the  festival 
excitement  finds  its  ready  outlet  in  the  dance  ** 
and  the  accompanying  song,  j  So  strong  was 
this  feminine  tradition  that  the  earlier  form 
of  art  poetry — the  songs  of  the  minstrels,  or 
chanson  populaire — **  invariably  and  in  com- 
plete contradiction  to  the  tone  of  the  chanson 
courtois  approaches  love  from  the  woman^s 
point  of  view.  The  yearning,  the  surrender, 
the  rapture,  the  endurance,  the  submission, 
the  regret  of  woman's  love  ;  these  are  the 
arguments  throughout  of  chansons  d'histoire, 
of  aubes,  and  of  refrainsy 

What  share  women  had  in  the  composi- 
tion of  the  now  surviving  ballads  and  songs 
cannot  be  shown.  But  it  might  fairly  be  con- 
tended that  some,  if  not  all,  of  the  qualities 
in  which  they  differ  from  the  individual  art 
poetry  of  England,  especially  after  the  Re- 
naissance, are  due  largely  to  the  influence  of 
women  and  of  the  feminine  tradition.  And 
this  means  very  much,  not  only  on  account  of 

9 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

the  essential  value  of  the  ballads,  but  on 
account  of  their  powerful  part  in  the  romantic 
revival  which  began  with  the  appearance  of 
Percy^s  *'  Reliques  of  Ancient  English 
Poetry." 

There  is  nothing  finer  in  these  ballads  than 
the  descriptions  of  women,  the  narratives  of 
their  actions,  and  the  words  they  speak.  The 
heroic  and  romantic  figure  of  a  woman  is 
frequent.  Such,  above  all,  is  the  lady  who 
defends  her  castle  against  Edom  O'Gordon 
and  his  men  ;  and  when,  to  save  her  from  the 
flames,  she  lets  down  her  daughter  over  the 
wall,  only  to  fall  unhappily  on  the  enemy's 
spear,  he  speaks  in  words  exactly  equal  to 
Webster's,  '*  Cover  her  face :  mine  eyes 
dazzle  :  she  died  young  "  : 

O  bonnie,  bonnie  was  her  mouth, 

And  cherry  were  her  cheeks, 
And  clear,  clear  was  her  yellow  hair, 

Whereon  the  red  blood  dreeps. 

Then  wi'  his  spear  he  turn'd  her  owre  : 

0  gin  her  face  was  wan ! 

He  said,  "Ye  are  the  first  that  e'er 

1  wish'd  alive  again." 

He  cam'  and  look  it  again  at  her  ; 

O  gin  her  skin  was  white ! 
"  I  might  hae  spared  that  bonnie  face 

To  hae  been  some  man's  delight. 

lO 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

*'  Busk  and  boun,  my  merry  men  a', 

For  ill  dooms  I  do  guess  ; — 
I  cannot  look  on  that  bonnie  face 

As  it  lies  on  the  grass." 

In  this  world  of  the  ballads  how  bold, 
beautiful  and  tender  the  women  are ;  and 
they  seem  to  be  as  free  as  they  are  bold. 
Fair  Janet,  sitting  at  her  needlework,  no 
sooner  wishes  to  be  ''  in  Carterhaugh,  amang 
the  leaves  sae  green,"  than  she  lets  fall  the 
needle  and  is  away  to  Carterhaugh.  Burd 
Ellen  cuts  her  yellow  locks  *'an  inch  above 
her  e'e  "  and  puts  on  a  page's  dress  to  run 
after  her  cruel  mounted  lover  over  land  and 
water,  though  his  child  stirs  in  her  womb  ; 
and  ''  Young  John's  "  mistress  does  the  same 
and  when  he  bids  her  turn  back  only  cries  : 

**  But  again,  dear  love,  and  again,  dear  love, 

Will  ye  never  love  me  again  ? 
Alas  for  loving  you  sae  weel, 

And  you  nae  me  again." 

In  the  end  both  women  achieve  marriage 
with  their  lovers.  Nothing  could  be  more 
pitifully  eloquent  than  the  pleading  of  the 
betrayed  Annie  of  Lochroyan,  and  though 
she  is  drowned  through  the  cruelty  of  Lord 
Gregory's  mother,  she  seems  to  triumph  in 
death.  Fair  Catherine  in  the  ballad  of 
**  Young   Redin  "   shows   how  swift  can  be 

II 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

a  mistress's  revenge.  He  tells  her  he  is 
riding  away  to  wed  another :  nevertheless, 
she  bids  him  stay  one  night  with  her  and 
gives  him  ale  and  wine,  and  out  of  her 
bed  he  never  rises  again  until  he  is  taken 
and  thrown  into  the  Clyde  water.  In  ''Little 
Musgrave  and  the  Lady  Barnard  "there  is 
an  heroic  adultress  who,  seeing  her  husband 
strike  her  lover  dead  and  with  the  dagger 
bright  in  his  hand,  cries  out : 

"Although  thou'rt  dead,  thou  litde  Musgrave, 

Yet  I  for  thee  will  pray ; 
*'  And  wish  well  to  thy  soul  will  I, 

So  long  as  I  have  life  ; 
So  will  I  not  for  thee,  Barnard, 

Although  I'm  thy  wedded  wife." 

A  strong  mother  is  painted  by  the  first 
verse  of  "  The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well  "  : 

There  lived  a  wife  at  Usher's  Well, 

And  a  wealthy  wife  was  she  ; 
She  had  three  stout  and  stalwart  sons, 

And  sent  them  o'er  the  sea. 

When  they  come  home  their  hats  are  made 
from  a  birch  tree  that  grew  **at  the  gates  o' 
Paradise."  She  gets  the  fire  lit  and  a  feast 
laid,  and  when  they  are  gone  to  bed  she  sits 
down  at  their  bedside  but  falls  asleep.  The 
eldest  brother  says  it  is  time  to  go  because 
the  cock  crows,  but  the  youngest  replies  : 

12 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

"  Lie  still,  lie  still  but  a  little  wee  while, 

Lie  still  but  if  we  may  ; 
Gin  my  mother  should  miss  us  when  she  wakes 

She'll  go  mad  ere  it  be  day. 

"  Our  mother  has  nae  mair  but  us  ; 

See  where  she  leans  asleep  ; 
The  mantle  that  was  on  herself, 

She  has  happ'd  it  round  our  feet." 

He  who  looks  for  effects  of  this  kind  must 
go  either  to  ballad  poetry  or  to  the  poetry  and 
fiction  of  the  last  hundred  years.  Perhaps 
the  most  remarkable  of  all  is  the  ballad  of 
four  verses  entirely  about  two  women  : 

O  Bessie  Bell  and  Mary  Gray, 

They  were  twa  bonny  lasses  ; 
They  built  a  house  on  yon  burn-brae, 

And  theek't  it  o'er  wi'  rashes. 

They  theek't  it  o'er  wi'  birk  and  brume, 
They  theek't  it  o'er  wi'  heather  ; 

Till  the  pest  cam'  frae  the  neib'rin  town, 
And  strack  them  baith  thegither 

They  werena  buried  in  Mefifin  kirkyard, 

Amang  the  rest  o'  their  kin  ; 
But  they  were  buried  on  Dornoch  Haugh, 

On  the  bent  before  the  sun. 

Sing,  Bessie  Bell  and  Mary  Gray, 

They  were  twa  bonny  lasses  ; 
They  built  a  bower  on  yon  burn-brae, 

And  theek't  it  o'er  wi'  rashes. 

13 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Here  the  effect  is  made  by  the  two  girls  in 
solitude,  and  without  any  mention  or  sug- 
gestion of  a  man. 

Altogether  these  ballad  women  are  a  very 
noble  company,  worthy  of  a  people  that  once 
fought  under  the  command  of  women,  and 
made  sex  no  bar  to  rule,  worthy  of  Cartis- 
mandua,  Boadicea,  Rowena,  the  Empress 
Helena  and  Bertha,  and  the  poet's  women, 
Esla,  Rosmerta,  Embla,  Fridia,  Corwen,  Her- 
fryd,  and  the  rest,  some  bold,  some  tender, 
all  of  them  beautiful  and  of  high  courage. 

Could  English  poetry  have  been  founded 
earlier  upon  the  native  ballad  instead  of  upon 
conceited  ceremonious  and  exotic  work,  it 
would  not  have  spent  two  centuries  in  an 
almost  exclusively  masculine  world.  But 
there  is  very  little  English  poetry  in  which 
the  paternity — or,  we  should  rather  say,  the 
maternity — of  the  folk  ballad  can  be  felt  until 
we  come  to  the  more  or  less  deliberate  dis- 
cipleship  of  the  romantic  movement.  But, 
as  Mr.  Chambers  has  pointed  out,  the  early 
English  lyrics  have  often  an  honesty  and 
naturalness  which  seem  to  link  them  to  the 
folk  song,  while  ''  The  Nut-Brown  Maid"  of 
the  fifteenth  century  has  some  clear  con- 
nections both  in  spirit  and  in  detail.  The 
maid,  for  example,  is  willing  to  be  kind 
to  her  lover's    paramour,  even   as   was   the 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

mistress  of  Child  Waters  ;  the  squire  tells  her 
she  must  cut  short  her  kirtle  and  her  hair,  as 
Burd  Ellen  did  ;  and  she  is  willing  to  live  an 
outlaw's  life  with  him,  though  it  is  no 
maiden's  part.  The  poem  gives  us  a  feeling 
of  the  perfect  equality  of  the  man  and  the 
maid,  though  the  woman,  indeed,  ''  bears  the 
brunt  of  the  emotion,"  a  fact  which  hints  to 
Mr.  Chambers  of  "  an  inspiration  from  folk 
song."     Another  piece  of  one  verse — 

Western  wind,  when  will  thou  blow, 
The  small  rain  down  can  rain  ? 

Christ,  if  my  love  were  in  my  arms 
And  I  in  my  bed  again! 

has  more  than  a  tinge  of  the  ballad  and  song, 
*'  The  Unquiet  Grave,"  which  begins  : 

The  wind  doth  blov/  to-day,  my  love. 
And  a  few  small  drops  of  rain ; 

I  never  had  but  one  true-love. 
In  cold  grave  she  was  lain. 

And  this  is  a  piece  which  is  alive  tO-day 
in  Somersetshire.  (See  '*  Folk  Songs  from 
Somerset."  Edited  by  Cecil  Sharp.)  In 
many  of  the  other  mediaeval  lyrics  can  be  felt 
the  same  crude  and  helpless  truth  which  is  so 
feminine;  as  if  women  were  not  light  enough 
for  the  airy  metaphysical  love-poem  that 
records  the  love  not  so  much  of  mortal  flesh 

15 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

and  spirit,  but  of  love.   Alisoun — of  the  well- 
known 

Between  March  and  April 

When  spray  beginneth  to  spring — 

Alisoun  appears  to  be  a  real  woman,  both 
by  her  name  and  by  her  colouring — fair 
hair,  brown  eyebrows  and  black  eyes.  In 
**  Lenten  is  come  with  Love  to  Town ''  and 
others  the  sounds  and  sights  of  the  land- 
scape are  real  and  English  enough.  In  some 
pieces  the  device  is  used  of  pretending  to 
overhear  a  complaining  maid.  But  already 
**  the  sentiment  is  individual,  not  communal," 
and  the  writer  has  the  solitariness  of  the 
lover  and  the  artist  at  the  hour  of  com- 
position. The  women  who  can  influence  him 
are  the  mother  that  bore  him,  the  maid  he 
courts,  his  patron's  lady,  and  any  others 
whose  beauty  or  sweet  voices  or  kindness 
may  serve  in  this  or  that  way  his  spirit  or 
sense.  Being  a  man  of  learning  he  will  also 
be  affected  by  the  idea  of  woman  created  by 
books  and  tradition.  He  will  have  learned 
that  God's  gifts  to  women  are  deceitfulness, 
weeping  and  spinning,  that  women's  advice 
is  often  fatal,  that  it  is  worse  to  have  a  woman 
at  rack  and  manger  than  to  keep  a  horse  idle 
in  the  stable,  that  woman  is  the  confusion  of 
man ;  and  the  Bible  will  have  improved  this 
wisdom.  From  Ovid,  or  nearer  home,  he 
16 


The  Inspiration  of  Poetry 

will  have  learned  the  indolence,  the  playful- 
ness and  the  lusciousness  of  substitutes  for 
love.  Provencal  poetry,  which  includes  not 
one  epithalamium,  not  one  address  to  a  mar- 
riageable lady,  will  have  taught  him  the 
''great  reserve"  and  the  *'  essentially  respect- 
ful style "  due  to  the  difference  in  social 
position  between  the  patroness  and  the 
amorous  troubadour,  the  elaborate  cere- 
moniousness  of  fanciful  relations  between  the 
sexes  which  '*  could  only  have  been  imagined 
in  the  artificial  social  conditions  of  courts, 
wherein  it  is  possible  for  the  real  economic 
subjection  of  women  to  be  glossed  over  with 
an  appearance  of  consideration  and  respect." 
Through  these  conventions  and  traditions 
must  the  personality  of  some  one  woman 
pierce  if  life  is  to  be  granted  to  his  poetry. 


B  17 


Chapter  "Two :  Women  and 
Inspiration 

AS  life  has  been  refined  and  made 
secure,  as  the  arts  of  life,  and  espe- 
cially of  indoor  life,  and  of  peace, 
have  multiplied  and  developed,  so  women  have 
drawn  more  and  more  level  with  men  in  many 
ways,  and  their  voices  have  been  more  often 
and  more  clearly  heard.  But  until  recent 
times  their  voices  have  passed  rapidly  into 
silence,  like  those  of  the  average  man,  except 
in  so  far  as  they  have  lived  on  in  the  enduring 
books  of  men.  In  this  matter  of  their  in- 
fluence upon  poets  men  have  been  by  no 
means  explicit,  and  only  when  letters  and 
contemporary  records  begin  to  abound  can 
we  find  much  evidence  that  is  not  vague  or 
conjectural. 

Before  looking  at  this  evidence  of  the  part 
played  by  women  in  the  life  of  poets  and 
the  creation  of  poems,  it  is  as  well  to  give 
some  examples  of  the  relation  between  poetry 
and  experiences  in  the  external  world.  There 
are  certainly  many  poems  which  are  quite 
beyond  the  reach  of  any  such  evidence.  They 
live  themselves,  and  they  enchain  us,  from 
beginning  to  end  in  their  own  unfleshly  world ; 
and  supposing  that  some  material  circum- 
stances were  the  seedground  of  the  immortal 
i8 


Women  and  Inspiration 

and  ethereal  flower,  and  that  these  circum- 
stances were  placed  before  us,  we  should  be 
very  little  the  wiser,  nor  probably  could  the 
poet  himself  offer  us  any  help.  There  are, 
however,  some  poems  which  dwell  in  a  middle 
world  between  this  and  the  empyrean  ;  these 
contain  evidence  of  their  origin  within 
themselves.  Of  others  chance  or  the  self- 
consciousness  of  the  modern  poet  has  left  us 
some  explanation. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  a  consideration, 
even  if  such  were  profitable,  of  Poe's  "  Philo- 
sophy of  Composition,"  where  he  shows  us 
his  manner  of  making  *'  The  Raven."  In  that 
astonishing  essay  Poe  says  that  he  prefers  to 
begin  composition  with  ''  the  consideration  of 
an  effect."  If  he  is  speaking  the  truth  it  is 
wonderful  that  his  effects  should  be  so  often 
good,  since  it  is  certain  that  effects  are  usually, 
perhaps  always,  beyond  the  calculation  of  the 
artist.  Poe  represents  himself  as  choosing  a 
subject  deliberately  which  will  help  him  to 
produce  a  certain  effect,  and  all  through  the 
essay  he  keeps  to  his  task  of  proving  that 
nothing  in  the  composition  of  '*  The  Raven  " 
is  referable  *' either  to  accident  or  intuition." 
I  instinctively  distrust  a  man,  whether  Poe, 
De  Quincey,  or  another,  who  speaks  with 
such  precision  and  emphasis  ;  but  no  matter ; 
the  choice  of  this  poem,  *'  The  Raven,"  as  an 

19 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

example  is  unfortunate,  since  it  is  so  often 
absurd,  and  so  often  constructed  with  obvious 
and  naked  ingenuity,  that  the  interest  even  of 
the  perfectly  credulous  reader  is  only  slight ; 
and  the  fact  that  a  man  made  a  hundred  and 
eight  lines  by  a  combination  of  the  two  ideas, 
**  of  a  lover  lamenting  his  deceased  mistress 
and  a  Raven  continuously  repeating  the  word 
*  Nevermore,' "  brings  us  little  nearer  to 
understanding  the  growth  of  the  poem.  We 
must  be  content  with  evidence  far  less  lucid 
and  complete  than  Poe's. 

One  of  the  best  and  most  interesting  of 
Milton's  Latin  elegies  is  the  seventh,  written 
in  his  nineteenth  year.  Until  then,  says  the 
poem,  love  had  been  not  only  unfelt  by  him 
but  contemptible.  Cupid  threatened,  there- 
fore, to  overthrow  him  and  to  be  revenged. 
The  poet,  ignorant  of  this,  was  walking  out 
upon  a  May-day  through  the  suburbs  of 
London  and  out  into  the  country.  Many 
beauties  passed  him  and  were  passed,  and 
they  seemed  to  him  no  less  than  goddesses, 
-'  and  he  was  pleased  with  the  sight.  In  the 
first  elegy  also  he  had  praised  these  beauties 
of  the  London  parks  and  gardens.  But  one 
there  was  among  these  at  sight  of  whom  he 
became  all  one  flame  of  love,  as  she  was  the 
lovely  and  unconscious  haunt  of  love,  upon 
lashes,  cheeks,  and  lips.  Like  the  others  she 
20 


Women  and  Inspiration 

passed  him  by.  She  disappeared  never  to 
return,  and  he  felt  torn  apart  from  her.  He 
could  not  dismiss  her  from  his  mind,  nor  yet 
pursue  her.  If  only  he  could  once  see  the 
features  of  the  beloved ;  if  they  should  meet 
again,  oh  !  that  one  arrow  should  transfix 
their  two  hearts  at  once.  Eighteen  years 
afterwards  Milton  sent  this  poem  to  the 
printer,  and  he  appended  ten  stern  lines  of 
censure  upon  this  monument  of  his  youthful 
folly.  In  spite  of  this  the  walk  was  not  for- 
gotten, and  many  years  later,  when  he  wished 
to  say  how  beautiful  Eve  seemed  to  Satan, 
it  returned  to  his  vision,  and  along  with  it 
perhaps  the  very  look  of  the  London  girl : 

As  one  who,  long  in  populous  city  pent, 
Where  houses  thick  and  sewers  annoy  the  air, 
Forth  issuing  on  a  summer's  morn,  to  breathe 
Among  the  pleasant  villages  and  farms 
Adjoined,  from  each  thing  met  conceives  delight — 
The  smell  of  grain,  or  tedded  grass,  or  kine  ; 
Or  dairy,  each  rural  sight,  each  rural  sound — 
If  chance  with  nymph-like  step  fair  virgin  pass, 
What  pleasing  seemed  for  her  now  pleases  more, 
She  most,  and  in  her  look  sums  all  delight  : 
Such  pleasure  took  the  Serpent  to  behold 
This  flowery  plat,  the  sweet  recess  of  Eve 
Thus  early,  thus  alone.     Her  heavenly  form 
Angelic,  but  more  soft  and  feminine, 
Her  graceful  innocence,  her  every  air 
Of  gesture  or  least  action,  overawed 
His  malice,  and  with  rapine  sweet  bereaved 
His  fierceness  of  the  fierce  intent  it  brought.  .  . 

21 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Of  the  same  order  was  Charles  Lamb's 
love  for  the  young  Quaker,  Hester  Savory. 
Writing  to  Manning  a  few  months  after  her 
marriage  and  early  death,  he  said  that  he  had 
been  in  love  with  her  for  some  years  while  he 
lived  at  Pentonville,  though  he  had  never 
spoken  to  her  in  his  life.  With  the  letter  he 
sent  the  poem  written  upon  her  death,  "  When 
maidens  such  as  Hester  die." 

Keats'  sonnet,  "  Time's  sea  hath  been  five 
years  at  its  slow  ebb,"  was  written  five  years 
after  he  was  *'  tangled  in  the  beauty's  web  " 
of  a  lady  whom  he  saw  only  once  ifor  a  few 
moments  at  Vauxhall. 

There  is  also  an  anonymous  Elizabethan 
poem  in  praise  of  a  lady  seen  and  loved  in 
passing  by : 

There  is  a  lady  sweet  and  kind, 
Was  never  one  so  pleased  my  mind. 
I  did  but  see  her  passing  by, 
And  yet  I  love  her  till  I  die. 

It  is   possible   that  Burns'   *'  Mally's   meek, 
Mally's  sweet  "  records  a  similar  meeting — 

As  I  was  walking  up  the  street, 
A  barefit  maid  I  chanc'd  to  meet ; 
But  O,  the  road  was  very  hard 
For  that  fair  maiden's  tender  feet — 

though  it  was  perhaps  Burns'  way  to  turn 

22 


Women  and  Inspiration 

round  in  time  to  make  the  best  of  such  a 
meeting. 

Burns'  letters  give  some  intimate  proof  of 
the  origin  of  certain  poems  in  a  personal 
experience.  When  he  was  thirty-three  he 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Dunlop  saying  that  he  was  in 
love : 

But  the  word  Love,  owing  to  the  intermingledoms 
of  the  good  and  the  bad  and  the  pure  and  the  impure, 
in  this  world,  being  rather  an  equivocal  term  for 
expressing  one's  sentiments  and  sensations,  I  must  do 
justice  to  the  sacred  purity  of  my  attachment.  Know, 
then,  that  the  heart-struck  awe  ;  the  distant  humble 
approach  ;  the  delight  we  should  have  in  gazing  upon 
and  listening  to  a  Messenger  of  Heaven,  appearing 
in  all  the  unspotted  purity  of  his  celestial  home, 
among  the  coarse,  polluted,  far  inferior  sons  of  men, 
to  deliver  to  them  tidings  that  make  their  hearts  swim 
in  joy,  and  their  imaginations  soar  in  transport — such, 
so  delighting  and  so  pure,  were  the  emotions  of  my 
soul  on  meeting  the  other  day  with  Miss  Lesley 
Baillie,  your  neighbour  at  Mayfield. 

She  and  her  sister  were  on  their  way  to 
England  with  their  father,  and  Burns — 
''though  God  knows  I  could  ill  spare  the 
time" — rode  fourteen  or  fifteen  miles  with 
them.  He  left  them  at  about  nine,  and 
riding  home  composed  the  ballad  beginning : 

O  saw  ye  bonie  Lesley, 

As  she  gaed  o'er  the  Border  ? 

In  a  later  letter  he  speaks  of  riding  with  her 

23 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

''out  of  pure  devotion,  to  admire  the  loveH- 
ness  of  the  works  of  God,  in  such  an  un- 
equalled display  of  them,"  and  he  says  ex- 
plicitly that  he  made  the  ballad  during  the 
ride  home  :  ''  In  galloping  home  at  night,  I 
made  a  ballad  on  her."  But  the  two  stanzas 
which  he  sent  as  a  specimen  are  not  metrically 
or  verbally  the  same  as  those  afterwards 
printed. 

Burns  called  ''Bonie  Lesley  "  a  **  parody  " 
of  a  certain  old  ballad.  Probably  the  form 
and  melody  of  this  ballad  were  in  his  head 
as  he  rode  thinking  of  Lesley  Baillie.  To  the 
composition  of  ''  Blythe  hae  I  been  on  yon 
hill  '*  we  know  that  music  and  a  woman  both 
contributed,  and  that  woman  was  the  same 
Lesley  Baillie.  The  song  was  suggested  by 
the  slow  playing  of  ''The  Quakers  Wife'* 
upon  the  oboe,  which  charmed  Burns  to 
enthusiasm  so  that  he  "  made  a  song  for  it  "  ; 
but  he  says  later  on  that  it  is  "  composed  on 
a  young  lady,  positively  the  most  beautiful 
lovely  woman  in  the  world."  In  this  same 
note  he  adds  that  he  purposes  giving  Thomson 
"  the  name  and  designation "  of  all  his 
heroines  to  appear  in  a  future  edition  of  the 
songs,  "  perhaps  half  a  century  hence."  Of 
"  How  can  my  poor  heart  be  glad  "  he  tells 
Thomson  that  he  made  it  on  the  evening  of 
August  29,  1794,  as  he  was  straying  out  and 

24 


Women  and  Inspiration 

thinking  of  the  tune  of  *'  O'er  the  hills  and 
far  away."  He  relates  that  '*  O  were  my 
love  yon  lilac  fair  '*  was  founded  upon  an  old 
verse : 

O  if  my  love  was  a  bonny  red  rose, 
And  growing  upon  some  barren  wa', 

And  I  myself  a  drap  of  dew, 

Down  in  that  red  rose  I  would  fa. 

He  thought  this  too  short  for  a  song.  Often 
he  tried  to  add  a  stanza  to  it,  but  in  vain. 
At  length  *' after  balancing  myself  for  a 
musing  five  minutes  on  the  hind-legs  of  my 
elbow-chair  I  produced  this  song."  This 
must  call  to  mind  the  letter  to  Thomson 
where  he  complains  that  he  cannot  get  on 
with  a  song  to  the  tune  of  '*  Laddie  lie  near 
me": 

I  do  not  know  the  air  ;  and  until  I  am  complete 
master  of  a  tune  in  my  own  singing  (such  as  it  is),  I 
never  can  compose  for  it.  My  way  is  :  1  consider 
the  poetic  sentiment  correspondent  to  my  idea  of 
the  musical  expression  and  then  choose  my  theme, 
and  begin  one  stanza  ;  when  that  is  composed,  which 
is  generally  the  most  difficult  part  of  the  business,  I 
walk  out,  sit  down  now  and  then,  look  out  for  objects 
in  nature  around  me  that  are  in  unison  or  harmony 
with  the  cogitations  of  my  fancy,  and  workings  of 
my  bosom ;  humming  every  now  and  then  the  air, 
with  the  verses  I  have  framed.  When  I  feel  my 
muse  beginning  to  jade,  I  retire  to  the  solitary 
fireside  of  my  study,  and  there  commit  my  effusions 
to  paper ;  swinging  at  intervals  on  the  hind-legs  of 

25 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

my  elbow-chair,  by  way  of  calling  forth  my  own 
critical  strictures,  as  my  pen  goes  on.  Seriously 
this,  at  home,  is  almost  invariably  my  way. 

''  Craigieburn  Wood  "was  ''  composed  on  a 
passion  which  a  Mr.  Gillespie,  a  particular 
friend  of  mine,  had  for  a  Miss  Lorimer,  after- 
wards a  Mrs.  Whepdale.  The  young  lady 
was  born  in  Craigieburn  wood."  The  chorus — 

Beyond  thee,  dearie,  beyond  thee,  dearie. 

And  O,  to  be  lying  beyond  thee  ! 
O,  sweetly,  soundly,  weel  may  he  sleep 
That's  laid  in  the  bed  beyond  thee ! — 

is  part  of  *'an  old  foolish  ballad"  says 
Burns. 

We  know  still  more  of  the  origin  of 
Wordsworth's  poems,  thanks  to  his  sister 
Dorothy's  journal  and  his  own  notes.  The 
lines  '*To  a  Butterfly,"  for  example,  were 
written  at  breakfast-time  on  a  Sunday — 
March  14,  1802.  '*The  thought  first  came 
upon  him,"  says  the  sister,  as  they  were 
talking  about  the  pleasure  they  both  always 
felt  at  the  sight  of  a  butterfly,  recalling  how 
she  chased  them  but  did  not  catch  them  for 
fear  of  brushing  the  dust  off"  their  wings, 
while  the  poet  killed  all  the  white  ones  when 
he  went  to  school ''  because  they  were  French- 
men." Wordsworth  ate  nothing  at  breakfast, 
but  sat  *'  with  his  neck  unbuttoned,  and  his 
26 


Women  and  Inspiration 

waistcoat  open  while  he  did  it."    Her  journal 
contains  the  material  of  the  poem  beginning 
''  She  had  a  tall  man's  height  or  more,"  and 
called    '*  Beggars."      After  tea  she  read  out 
from  her  journal  the  account  of  the  little  boy 
and  the  tall  woman,  ''  tall  much  beyond  the 
measure  of  tall  women,"  who  had  called  at 
the  door  while  the  poet  was  away.     Words- 
worth could  not  put  the  incident  out  of  his 
mind,  and  he  went  tired  to  bed,  leaving  the 
poem   unfinished,    though    in   a   walk    from 
Rydal  he  had  got ''  warmed  with  the  subject  " 
and  half  cast  it.     The  next  day  he  finished 
the  poem  before  he  got  up  at  nine.     Before 
writing  ''  The  Thorn  "  he  had  observed  on  a 
stormy  day  for  the  first  time  a  thorn  upon 
the   ridge  of  Quantock    Hill  which  he  had 
many  times  passed  by.     He  then  said  to  him- 
self: **  Cannot   I    by  some  invention  do  as 
much   to   make   this   thorn   permanently  an 
impressive  object  as  the  storm  has  made  it  to 
my  eyes  at  this  moment  ?  "     It  was  his  wish 
to  show  the  manner  in  which  a  superstitious 
man — such   as   a   retired  captain  of  a  small 
trading  vessel  past  middle   age — cleaves  to 
the   same   ideas.     **  I    had,"   he   says,   '*two 
objects  to  attain  ;  first  to  represent  a  picture 
which  should  not  be  unimpressive,  yet  con- 
sistent with  the  character  that  should  describe 
it ;  secondly,  while  I  adhered  to  the  style  in 

27 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

which  such  persons  describe,  to  take  care  that 
words,  which  in  their  minds  are  impregnated 
with  passion,  should  likewise  convey  passion 
to  readers  who  are  not  accustomed  to  sympa- 
thise with  men  feeling  in  that  manner  or  in 
any  such  language.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
this  might  be  done  by  calling  in  the  assist- 
ance of  lyrical  and  rapid  metre.  It  was 
necessary  that  the  Poem,  to  be  natural,  should 
in  reality  move  slowly ;  yet  I  hoped  that,  by 
the  aid  of  the  metre,  to  those  who  should  at 
all  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  Poem,  it  would 
appear  to  move  quickly." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  origin  of 
*'  Alice  Fell  **  is  a  story  told  to  the  Words- 
worths  by  a  friend  in  a  manner  differing  only 
from  the  poem  in  its  brevity  and  prose  form. 
The  sonnet,  **  I  saw  the  Figure  of  a  Lovely 
Maid,"  exactly  describes  a  dream  in  which 
his  daughter  appeared  to  him.  It  was  com- 
posed on  the  middle  road  between  Grasmere 
and  Ambleside,  begun  and  ended,  word  for 
word  as  it  now  stands,  before  he  came  in 
sight  of  Rydal :  which,  he  says,  was  un- 
usually rapid  and  straightforward  composi- 
tion. Another  slight  poem,  ''  Foresight," 
had  its  origin  in  Dorothy's  remark  :  '*  When 
I  was  a  child  I  would  not  have  pulled  a 
strawberry  blossom."  Wordsworth  all  but 
finished  the  poem  that  day.  It  kept  him  long 
28 


Women  and  Inspiration 

off  his  dinner,  as  better  poems  did.  The 
sister  s  reading  aloud  of  Milton's  sonnets  in 
1801  brought  home  to  him  more  impressively 
than  before  their  '*  dignified  simplicity  and 
majestic  harmony."  He  took  fire,  to  use  his 
own  words,  and  wrote  three  sonnets  the  same 
afternoon,  one  of  them  being  ''  I  grieved  for 
Buonaparte."  In  the  case  of  ''  Lucy  Gray," 
there  are  two  sets  of  evidence  concerning  its 
origin.  The  story  was  told  by  his  sister,  of 
a  little  girl  bewildered  in  a  snow-storm  near 
Halifax  in  Yorkshire.  His  object  was  to 
exhibit  solitude  poetically,  and  he  himself 
says  that  ''  the  way  in  which  the  incident 
was  treated,  and  the  spiritualising  of  the 
character  might  furnish  hints  for  contrasting 
the  imaginative  influences  which  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  throw  over  common  life  with 
Crabbe's  matter-of-fact  style  of  treating  sub- 
jects of  the  same  kind." 

The  '* Lines  to  a  Butterfly"  was  not  the 
only  poem  which  kept  Wordsworth  from  his 
meals.  He  begged  the  pardon  of  his  wife 
and  sister  for  similar  transgressions  all 
through  their  life  together.  The  labour  of 
composition  was  exacting,  and  often  led  to 
complete  exhaustion.  When  writing  "The 
White  Doe  of  Rylstone,"  his  heel  had  been 
rubbed  sore  by  too  tight  a  shoe,  and  he 
observed  that  ''  the  irritation  of  the  wounded 

29 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

part  was  kept  up,  by  the  act  of  composition, 
to  a  degree  that  made  it  necessary  to  give  his 
constitution  a  holiday."  He  was  writing  this 
poem  in  rough  weather  at  the  close  of  1807, 
and  he  used  to  walk  up  and  down  pouring 
out  his  verses  aloud  in  a  field  where  a  row  of 
stacks  lent  him  shelter.  The  mood  exquisitely 
favourable  to  poetic  conception  and  gestation 
as  distinguished  from  parturition,  for  Words- 
worth, and  probably  for  many  another,  is  the 
subject  of  one  of  his  finest  sonnets  : 

Most  sweet  it  is  with  unuplifted  eyes 

To  pace  the  ground,  if  path  be  there  or  none, 

While  a  fair  region  round  the  traveller  lies 

Which  he  forbears  again  to  look  upon  : 

Pleased  rather  with  some  soft  ideal  scene, 

The  work  of  Fancy,  or  some  happy  tone 

Of  meditation,  slipping  in  between 

The  beauty  coming  and  the  beauty  gone. 

If  Thought  and  Love  desert  us,  from  that  day 

Let  us  break  off  all  commerce  with  the  Muse  : 

With  Thought  and  Love  companions  of  our  way, 

Whate  er  the  senses  take  or  may  refuse, 

The  Mind's  internal  heaven  shall  shed  her  dews 

Of  inspiration  on  the  humblest  lay. 

The  poet  walked  as  much  as  possible  out 
of  doors :  which  reminds  me  that  Lord 
Bacon  used  to  say  sweet  herbs  and  flowers 
refreshed  his  memory,  and  on  an  April  day 
would  ride  out  to  enjoy  the  rain  which  he 
considered  wholesome  **  because  of  the  nitre 

30 


Women  and  Inspiration 

in  the  air  and  the  universal  spirit  of  the 
world "  ;  he  would  often  have  music  near 
where  he  was  meditating. 

As  late  as  1833,  only  a  year  before  his 
death,  Coleridge  said  that  he  could  write  as 
good  verses  as  ever  he  did  if  perfectly  free 
from  vexation  and  within  easy  reach  of  as 
much  fine  music  as  he  liked,  which,  he 
added,  *'has  a  sensible  effect  in  harmonising 
my  thoughts  and  in  animating  and,  as  it 
were,  lubricating  my  inventive  faculty."  He 
told  Hazlitt  that  he  liked  to  compose  in 
''  walking  over  uneven  ground,  or  breaking 
through  the  straggling  branches  of  a  copse- 
wood."  Coleridge  at  his  best  is  as  disdainful 
of  the  pursuit  of  bipeds  as  any  poet,  though 
it  is  well  known  that  even  ''  Christabel "  con- 
tains two  phrases  almost  straight  from 
Dorothy  Wordsworth's  journal.  One  of  these 
is  the  well-known — 

The  one  red  leaf,  the  last  of  its  clan, 
That  dances  as  often  as  dance  it  can, 

which  is  to  be  found  in  the  journal  thus : 
''  One  only  leaf  upon  the  top  of  a  tree — the 
sole  remaining  leaf — danced  round  and  round 
like  a  rag  blown  by  the  wind."  He  wrote, 
however,  several  verses  upon  definite  occa- 
sions, such  as  the  sonnet  upon  receiving  the 
news  of  his  first  infant's  birth.    But  of ''  Kubla 

31 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Kahn  "  and  ''  The  Ancient  Mariner  "  also  there 
are  some  explanatory  details  known.  In  the 
summer  of  1797,  at  a  lonely  farmhouse, 
Coleridge  fell  asleep  under  the  influence  of 
opium  just  as  he  had  read  the  words  of 
Purchas : 

In  Xamdu  did  Cublai  Can  build  a  stately  Palace, 
encompassing  sixteen  miles  of  plain  ground  with  a 
wall,  wherein  are  fertile  Meddowes,  pleasant  Springs, 
delightful  Streams,  and  all  sorts  of  beasts  of  chase 
and  game,  and  in  the  middest  thereof  a  sumptuous 
house  of  pleasure. 

The  poet  says  that  he  slept  for  three  hours 
**  during  which  time  he  has  the  most  vivid 
confidence,  that  he  could  not  have  composed 
less  than  from  two  to  three  hundred  lines  ;  if 
that  indeed  can  be  called  composition  in 
which  all  the  images  rose  up  before  him  as 
things,  with  a  parallel  production  of  the 
correspondent  expressions,  without  any  sen- 
sation or  consciousness  of  effort."  On  waking 
he  wrote  down  the  fifty-four  lines  which 
survive.  Some  one  called  on  business,  and 
he  could  afterwards  recall  no  more  except 
''some  eight  or  ten  scattered  lines  and 
images."  From  these  fragments  he  could 
never  integrate  the  whole.  ''  The  Ancient 
Mariner,"  he  said,  was  founded  on  a  friend's 
dream  of  a  skeleton  ship  with  figures  in  it. 
Wordsworth  suggested  that  the  mariner 
32 


Women  and  Inspiration 

should  have  killed  an  albatross  and  suffer 
from  the  vengeance  of  the  tutelary  spirits  of 
the  South  Sea  ;  and  also  that  the  ship  should 
be  navigated  by  dead  men.  This  was  as  the 
two  were  walking  over  the  Quantocks  towards 
Watchet  from  Alfoxden.  Composition  was 
begun  that  evening,  Wordsworth  contributing 
the  phrase  *'  long  and  lank  and  brown  as  is  the 
ribbed  sea-sand,"  the  stanza  beginning  ''  He 
holds  him  with  his  glittering  eye,"  and  some 
other  lines  now  unknown.  The  poem  was 
part  of  the  plan  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  formed 
between  the  two  poets,  and  Coleridge  was  to 
work  upon  *' persons  and  characters  super- 
natural, or  at  least  romantic ;  yet  so  as  to 
transfer  from  our  inward  nature  a  human 
interest  and  a  semblance  of  truth  sufficient 
to  procure  for  these  shadows  of  imagination 
that  willing  suspension  of  disbelief  for  the 
moment,  which  constitutes  poetic  faith." 
Thus  Coleridge's  temper  and  imagination, 
the  dream  of  his  friend,  the  suggestion  of 
Wordsworth,  the  memory  of  the  gravest 
ancient  ballads,  and  the  concerted  plan  of  the 
two  poets  all  melted  into  one  power  which 
brought  forth  ''The  Ancient  Mariner." 

Byron  puts  his  own  case  for  us,  as  we 
should  expect,  in  a  clear  downright  manner. 
He  is  writing  to  Moore  in  1816  in  reply  to  a 
request  for  a  dirge  upon  a  dead  girl.     *'  But 

c  33 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

how/'  he  asks,  *'  can  I  write  on  one  I  have 
never  seen  or  known  ? ''  He  could  not  write 
upon  anything  without  a  personal  experience 
and  foundation.  Ten  years  earlier,  when  he 
was  eighteen,  he  had  said  the  same  thing  in 
a  plangent  effusion  upon  **The  First  Kiss  of 
Love ''  written  in  the  depth  of  winter  : 

I  hate  you,  ye  cold  compositions  of  art, 

Though  prudes   may   condemn   me,    and   bigots 
reprove  ; 
I  court  the  effusions  that  spring  from  the  heart. 
Which  throbs,  with  deh'ght,  to  the  first  kiss  of 
love. 

All  but  everything  he  writes  is  perfectly 
substantial  and  at  blood  heat.  He  never 
makes  us  lift  more  than  one  foot  out  of  this 
very  world  of  every  day.  Whatever  is  said, 
acted  or  described,  hints  at  the  immediate 
parentage  of  actual  life  as  it  was  in  the  years 
between  1788  and  1824. 

A  very  clear  and  vivid  instance  of  inspira- 
tion is  recorded  of  John  Clare.  On  the  first 
night  of  walking  home  with  Martha  Turner, 
afterwards  his  wife,  he  said  good-bye  to  her 
at  the  door,  and  waited  about,  watching  the 
lights  of  her  home,  for  an  hour  or  two.  He 
then  set  out  on  the  return,  but  lost  his  way  in 
the  darkening  night  and  sat  down  upon  a 
haystack  in  contentment  to  write  a  love- 
song  in  the  light  of  the  new-risen  moon.  For 
34 


Women  and  Inspiration 

long  he  wandered  across  country  without 
finding  his  way,  until  he  lay  down  exhausted, 
and  awoke  to  find  himself  at  the  edge  of  a 
deep  canal  until  that  moment  unguessed. 

Keats  does  not  pretend  to  be  so  obvious  as 
Byron.  The  sonnet  beginning  ''  It  keeps 
eternal  whisperings  around  "  appears  to  have 
sprung  out  of  a  nervous  mood,  due  to  insuffi- 
cient rest  and  to  the  haunting  effect  of  a 
passage  in  '*  King  Lear" — *'  Do  you  not  hear 
the  sea?'*  This  was  at  Carisbrooke  in  April 
1 817.  At  Teignmouth  in  January  181 8,  he 
sat  down  to  read  **  King  Lear"  once  again: 
the  play  ''appeared  to  demand  the  prologue 
of  a  sonnet,"  and  he  wrote  it  before  beginning 
to  read.  The  sonnet  may  still  be  seen  in 
Keats'  copy  of  the  Shakespeare  folio  of  1808. 
It  is  the  one  beginning : 

O  golden  tongued  Romance  with  serene  Lute ! 
Fair-plumed  Syren,  Queen  of  far-away  ! 
Leave  melodizing  on  this  wintry  day, 
Shut  up  thine  olden  volume  and  be  mute. 

Before  telling  his  brothers  of  this  sonnet  he 
says  that  he  thinks  a  little  change  has  lately 
taken  place  in  his  intellect ;  he  can  no  longer 
give  himself  up  to  passiveness,  but  must  be 
interested  and  employed ;  and  he  quotes  the 
sonnet  as  an  example  of  the  benefit  of  a  very 
gradual  ripening  of  the  intellectual  powers  " 

35 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

for  the  purposes  of  great  productions.  Which 
must  mean  that  the  ferment  in  his  brain  came 
to  a  head  unsought  and  unexpected  upon 
the  opening  of  ''  King  Lear."  Mr.  W.  M. 
Rossetti  says  almost  the  same  of  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti.  He  wrote  after  fits  of 
apparently  indolent  brooding,  '*out  of  a 
large  fund  or  reserve  of  thought  and  con- 
sideration, which  would  culminate  in  a  clear 
impulse  or  (as  we  say)  in  inspiration." 
Wordsworth  is  certain  that  all  good  poetry  is 
written  in  this  way.     He  says  : 

All  good  poetry  is  the  spontaneous  overflow  of 
powerful  feelings  ;  and  thoug^h  this  be  true,  poems  to 
which  any  value  can  be  attached  were  never  produced 
on  any  variety  of  subjects  but  by  a  man  who,  being 
possessed  of  more  than  usual  organic  sensibility,  had 
also  thought  long  and  deeply.  For  our  continued 
influxes  of  feeling  are  modified  and  directed  by  our 
thoughts,  which  are  indeed  the  representatives  of  all 
our  past  feelings  ;  and,  as  by  contemplating  the  rela- 
tion of  those  general  representatives  to  each  other 
we  discover  what  is  really  important  to  men,  so,  by 
the  repetition  and  continuance  of  this  act,  our  feel- 
ings will  be  connected  with  important  subjects,  till 
at  length,  if  we  be  originally  possessed  of  much 
sensibility,  such  habits  of  mind  will  be  produced, 
that,  by  obeying  blindly  and  mechanically  the 
impulses  of  those  habits,  we  shall  describe  objects, 
and  utter  sentiments,  of  such  a  nature,  and  in  such 
connection  with  each  other,  that  the  understanding 
of  the  Reader  must  necessarily  be  in  some  degree 
enlightened  and  his  affections  strengthened  and 
purified. 

36 


Women  and  Inspiration 

Another  instance  of  the  still  and  stealthy 
growing  of  a  poem  is  Keats'  *'  To  a  Night- 
ingale," written  at  Hampstead  in  the  spring 
of  1819.  He  had  often  enjoyed  the  singing 
of  a  certain  nightingale,  and  one  morning 
after  breakfast  went  out  and  sat  under  a  plum- 
tree  near  its  nest  for  two  or  three  hours.  He 
returned  with  a  full  rough  draft  of  the  Ode ; 
and  this  rapid  execution  has  led  a  modern 
artist  to  represent  the  poet  sitting  down  to 
compose  with  the  words  *'  To  a  Nightingale  " 
already  at  the  top  of  the  paper.  Writing  in 
September  181 9,  Keats  tells  Reynolds  how 
surprisingly  pleasant  it  is  to  him  to  be  alone 
in  the  tranquillity  of  Winchester  in  autumn. 
*'  How  beautiful  the  season  is  now,"  he  re- 
marks ;  '*  how  fine  the  air — a  temperate 
sharpness  about  it.  Really,  without  joking, 
chaste  weather — Dian  skies — I  never  liked 
stubble-fields  so  much  as  now — Aye,  better 
than  the  chilly  green  of  the  spring.  Some- 
how, a  stubble-field  looks  warm — in  the  same 
way  that  some  pictures  lookw^arm."  And  so 
after  his  Sunday's  walk  he  composed  the 
''  Ode  to  Autumn."  Yet  both  just  before  and 
just  after  this  he  was  perplexed  by  his  own 
affairs,  by  his  love  for  Fanny  Brawne,  by  the 
ill-health  of  his  brother  George,  and  he  had 
given  up  *'  Hyperion."  But  his  own  health 
had  improved,  and  he  found  the  air  on  St. 

37 


Feminine  Influence  on  the   Poets 

Catherine's  Hill  *' worth  sixpence  a  pint." 
And  after  his  ''  half  comfortable  sullenness  " 
in  the  midst  of  perplexities,  after  trying  to 
wean  himself  from  his  too  wild  passion, 
''  The  Ode  to  Autumn  "emerged,  a  landscape 
that  is  the  very  picture  of  his  mind.  Although 
he  once  said  that  the  only  thing  that  could 
affect  him  for  more  than  a  passing  day  was 
a  doubt  of  his  powers  for  poetry,  although 
in  his  sublime  solitude  he  seemed  to  live 
not  in  this  world  alone  '*  but  in  a  thousand 
worlds "  of  his  strengthening  imagination, 
yet  he  made  this  resolution,  in  a  letter  to 
Haydon  of  March  1819,  '*  Never  to  write  for 
the  sake  of  writing  or  making  a  poem,  but 
from  running  over  with  any  little  knowledge 
or  experience  which  many  years  of  reflection 
may  perhaps  give  me."  Otherwise  he  will 
enjoy  his  great  conceptions  in  dumbness 
and  without  ''the  trouble  of  sonneteering." 
'*  I  will  not,"  he  says,  ''  I  will  not  spoil 
my  love  of  gloom  by  writing  an  Ode  to 
Darkness  ! " 

Shelley  is  still  harder  to  track.  We  know, 
for  example,  that  the  ''  Hymn  to  Intellectual 
Beauty"  was  conceived  during  his  voyage 
round  the  Lake  of  Geneva  with  Byron,  and 
that  it  was  composed — he  says  himself — 
"  under  the  influence  of  feelings  which  agitated 
me  even  to  tears "  ;  and  that  it  refers  in  a 

38 


Women  and  Inspiration 

heightened  manner  to  his  boyhood  and  to  a 
climacteric  ecstasy  in  the  presence  of  the 
''  Spirit  of  Beauty."  ''  Alastor  "  seems  to  have 
been  inspired  by  nothing  so  much  as  by 
his  long  delighted  voyages  upon  the  rivers 
of  Europe,  of  England,  and  of  the  imagina- 
tion ;  ''  I  have  sailed,"  he  says  with  a  thrill 
in  the  preface  to  ''  The  Revolt  of  Islam,"  '*  I 
have  sailed  down  mighty  rivers,  and  seen  the 
sun  rise  and  set,  and  the  stars  come  forth, 
whilst  I  have  sailed  night  and  day  down 
a  rapid  stream  among  mountains."  His 
familiarity  from  boyhood  with  ''  mountains 
and  lakes  and  the  sea,  and  the  solitude  of 
forests "  he  regards  as  among  the  circum- 
stances favourable  to  the  education  of  a  poet. 
To  this  he  adds  that  he  has  seen  populous 
cities  and  the  passions  of  their  multitudes, 
that  he  has  seen  the  theatres  of  tyranny  and 
war,  that  he  has  conversed  with  living  men 
of  genius,  that  '*  the  poetry  of  ancient  Greece 
and  Rome,  and  modern  Italy,  and  our  own 
country,  has  been  to  me,  like  external  nature, 
a  passion  and  an  enjoyment."  And  from 
such  sources  have  been  drawn  **  the  materials 
for  the  imagery  "  of  his  poem.  Six  months 
of  unremitting  ardour  and  enthusiasm  were 
occupied  by  the  composition  and  such  revision 
as  would  not  sacrifice  newness  and  energy  of 
imagery   and   language ;   the  thoughts  were 

39 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

gathered  in  as  many  years.  Of  ''  Prometheus 
Unbound  '*  he  tells  us  that  it  was  written 
upon  the  mountainous  ruins  of  the  Baths  of 
Caracalla  ;  the  ''  inspiration  "  of  the  drama 
was  ''the  bright  blue  sky  of  Rome,  and 
the  effect  of  the  vigorous  awakening  spring 
in  that  divinest  climate,  and  the  new  life 
with  which  it  drenches  the  spirits  even  to 
intoxication."  Led  on  to  discuss  poetry  and 
its  nature,  he  calls  a  poet  *'  the  combined 
product  of  such  internal  powers  as  modify 
the  nature  of  others  ;  and  of  such  external 
influences  as  sustain  these  powers." 

Shelley's  letters  show  us  portions  of  the 
process  of  dissolving  the  objects  of  the  out- 
ward and  visible  world  into  the  poet's  inner 
life,  so  as  to  form  if  not  a  complete  and 
consistent  new  world  there,  yet  one  of  great 
significance  which  can  only  die  with  his 
poetry.  No  one  can  read  the  letters  describing 
the  scenery  of  the  Alps  without  feeling  that 
the  forms  are  entering  the  poet's  brain  in  such 
a  way  that  they  are  certain  of  this  new  life. 
Nor  is  this  because  we  may  happen  to  connect 
some  of  these  descriptions  with  Asia's  song 
in  the  second  act  of  '*  Prometheus,"  with  these 
lines  in  particular  : 

We  have  pass'd  Age's  icy  caves, 

And  Manhood's  dark  and  tossing  waves, 

And  Youth's  smooth  ocean,  smiling  to  betray. 

40 


Women  and  Inspiration 

Shelley  himself  appears  to  have  been  partly 
conscious  of  these  processes.     He  says  that 
the   scenery   ''  will    haunt    his    talk " ;    that 
rivers  "  imitate  mind,  which  wanders  at  will 
over  pathless  deserts  "  ;  and  later  that  ''  the 
curse   of  this  life  is  that  whatever  is  once 
known  can  never  be  unknown.     You  inhabit 
a  spot  which  before  you  inhabit  it  is  as  in- 
different to  you  as  any  other  spot  upon  earth, 
and  when,  persuaded  by  some  necessity,  you 
think  to  leave  it,  you  leave  it  not ;  it  clings  to 
you — and  with  it  memories  of  things,  which, 
in  your  experience  of  them,  gave   no   such 
promise,   revenges  your  desertion."     One  of 
his  friends  said  that  Shelley  spent  his  life  in 
searching  for  green.     His  letters  of  descrip- 
tion are  full  of  references  to  lawns  among 
woods — **  lawns  of  such  verdure  as  I  have 
never  seen  before,"  and  so  on — and  it  appears 
that  his  lawns  are  meaning  more  to  him  than 
to  a  merely  aesthetic  observer  ;  if  I  say  that 
they  are  symbolic  I  shall  explain  nothing,  but 
I  may  suggest  something  of  the  truth.     In 
some  of  the  earliest  poems  it  may  be  seen 
that  he  is  using  images — ''  the  grave  "  and 
''  the  mist  on  the  heath  "  for  example — not 
yet  so  as  to  make  effective  poetry,  but  so  as 
to  hint  at  least  of  that  inner  world  of  images 
which  was  afterwards  to  gain  perfect  expres- 
sion.    The   ''charnel"   is   another  of  those 

41 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

images  that  lay  imperfectly  articulated  and 
understood  in  his  mind  long  after  he  wrote  to 
Hogg  of  ''  the  damp,  unintelligent  vaults  of  a 
charnel  house."  There  are  passages  where 
he  shows  that  as  yet  some  of  these  images 
had  only  an  allegorical  force,  as  when  he 
wrote  : 

We  shall  then  meet  in  Wales.  I  shall  try  to 
domesticate  in  some  antique  feudal  castle  whose 
mouldering  turrets  are  fit  emblems  of  decaying 
inequality  and  oppression,  whilst  the  ivy  shall  wave 
its  green  banners  above  like  Liberty,  and  flourish 
upon  the  edifice  that  essayed  to  crush  its  root.  As 
to  the  ghosts,  I  shall  welcome  them,  although  Harriet 
protests  against  my  invoking  them.  But  they  would 
tell  tales  of  times  of  old,  and  it  would  add  to  the 
picturesqueness  of  the  scenery  to  see  their  thin  forms 
flitting  through  the  vaulted  charnels. 

They  are  allegorical,  but  they  may  become 
symbolical.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  is  introduced 
the  influence  of  other  minds,  such  as  Ossian's, 
in  changing  a  visible  object  before  it  is  put 
into  the  alembic  of  the  spirit.  Dr.  Lind,  the 
strange  benevolent  physician  whom  Shelley 
knew  at  Eton,  was  changed  into  the  majestic 
mythical  figure  of  the  Hermit  in  **The  Revolt 
of  Islam,"  and  in  ''Prince  Athanase"  into  the 
**old,  old  man  with  hair  of  silver-white,"  the 
wise  Zonoras.  We  may  smile  when  he  tells 
Miss  Kitchener  that  she  is  *'a  thunder-riven 
pinnacle  of  rock  amid  the  rushing  tempest 
42 


Women  and  Inspiration 

and  the  boiling  surge,"  but  the  image  is  real 
and  destined  to  survive  this  application.    So, 
too,  when  he  writes  to  Mary  Godwin,  **  Would 
it  not  be  better,  my  heavenly  love,  to  creep 
into  the  loathliest  cave  so  that  we  might  be 
together  ?  "   And  in  the  next  paragraph,  '*  My 
mind,  without  yours,  is  dead  and  cold  as  the 
dark  midnight  river  when  the  moon  is  down/' 
These  are  more  than  comparisons  ;  they  have 
an  intenser  life  than  life  itself  as  it  is  com- 
monly lived.     When  he  writes  that  the  wind 
is  abroad  and  *'the  leaves  of  the  forest  are 
shattered  at  every  gust,"  I  feel  that  the  wind 
is  already  a  spiritual  wind  such  as  he  after- 
wards invoked  to  ''  drive  his  dead  thoughts 
over  the  universe,"  and   that   already   *^the 
imagination  has  breathed  into  the  most  in- 
animate   forms    some   likeness   of    its   own 
visions,"  as  he  says,  in  describing  the  calm 
lake  of  Geneva  at  evening. 

Shelley  sometimes,  perhaps  often,  wrote 
under  ''the  immediate  impression  of  the  deep 
and  powerful  feelings  excited  by  the  objects  " 
which  he  attempts  to  describe.  These  are 
the  words  he  uses  about  his  ''  Mont  Blanc." 
''As  an  undisciplined  overflowing  of  the 
soul,"  he  continues,  "it  rests  its  claim  to 
approbation  on  an  attempt  to  imitate  the  un- 
tamable wildness  and  inaccessible  solemnity 
from  which  these  feelings  sprang."     Again, 

43 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

''The  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  was  ''con- 
ceived and  chiefly  written  "  in  a  wood  near 
Florence  "on  a  day  when  that  tempestuous 
wind,  whose  temperature  is  at  once  mild  and 
animating,  was  collecting  the  vapours  that 
pour  down  the  autumnal  rains."  He  wrote 
"Ariel  to  Miranda"  out  of  doors,  and  the 
manuscript  was  like  "a  sketch  of  a  marsh 
overgrown  with  bulrushes,"  being  so  full  of 
corrections  that  only  a  few  lines  floated  whole 
in  the  wreckage  of  a  page  of  writing.  This 
is  a  description  which  calls  to  mind  those 
steps  in  composition  which  have  been  con- 
cealed, thought  Foe,  by  "authorial  vanity." 
They  would,  he  pretended  to  think,  shudder 
at  letting  the  public  peep  at  "the  elaborate 
and  vacillating  crudities  of  thought — at  the 
true  purposes  seized  only  at  the  last  moment 
— at  the  innumerable  glimpses  of  ideas  that 
arrived  not  at  the  maturity  of  full  view — at 
the  fully  matured  fancies  discarded  in  despair 
as  unmanageable — at  the  cautious  selections 
and  rejections — at  the  painful  erasures  and 
interpolations  .  .  ."  There  is  some  evidence 
that  Shelley  was  not  always  as  successful  as 
in  the  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  when  his 
composition  followed  close  upon  experience. 
Thus  he  abandoned  in  the  midst  his  verses 
on  his  dead  child,  Clara.  Others  of  the  frag- 
ments may  have  been  left  through  a  similar 
44 


Women  and  Inspiration 

precipitancy,  such,  for  example,  as  *'0  Mary 
dear."  ''Julian  and  Maddalo"  is  one  of  his 
few  poems  that  are  of  the  same  substance  as 
the  facts  from  which  they  sprang,  a  sermo 
pedestris  he  calls  it  himself.  The  original  of 
the  garden  of  **The  Sensitive  Plant"  was  the 
Pisan  garden  of  his  friend  Lady  Mountcashell. 
It  was,  says  Medwin,  '*  as  unpoetical  a  place 
as  could  be  well  imagined."  The  source  of 
the  poem's  inspiration  was  Lady  Mountcashell 
herself,  a  tall  blue-eyed  lady  of  a  lofty  and 
calm  presence,  who  was  everything  that  was 
amiable  and  wise.  A  year  later  Jane  Williams 
was  agreed  by  all  to  be  the  exact  antitype  of 
the  lady  in  "The  Sensitive  Plant."  The  fact 
was  that  the  exact  antitype  existed  in 
Shelley's  brain,  and  there  only.  A  real  thing 
or  a  real  person  could  be  no  more  to  him 
than  a  new  entrance  into  the  enchanted 
solitude  of  his  own  soul. 

From  several  modern  poets,  whom  I  am 
not  alone  in  admiring,  I  have  had  letters 
giving  some  indication  of  the  connection 
between  certain  poems  and  certain  facts  in 
experience.  One  sends  me  a  chain  of  love- 
songs  and  sonnets  where  the  wild  flames 
flicker  still  above  the  calm  glow  of  the  verse. 
None  of  these,  he  says,  represents  emotion 
remembered  in  tranquillity.  They  were 
written  ''out  of  emotion  as  white  hot  as  his 

45 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

nature  was  capable  of.'*  Some  were  composed 
in  the  very  presence  of  the  inaccessible 
beloved,  others  within  a  few  days  after  an 
everlasting  farewell.  Another  whom  I  should 
like  to  reveal,  that  I  might  by  quotation  add 
some  to  the  too  few  who  know  his  work,  says 
that  one  of  his  lovely  portraits  of  women  was 
**  based  on  Beardsley's  illustration  of  one  of 
Chopin's  Ballades."  Another  poem  is  '*  a 
kind  of  medley  hung  round,  I  should  think, 
some  childish  memory,  probably  of  a  sister ; 
possibly  in  one  of  the  quite  still,  absorbed, 
all-eyes  moments  little  children  have."  One 
poet  will  say  no  more  than  that  ''a  subject 
must  be  not  only  lived  but  re-lived,  before  it 
can  be  written  about,  and  it  is  the  re-living 
that  makes  the  poem,"  and  this  re-living  may 
be  prolonged  over  many  years  or  a  few 
minutes.  Coleridge  says  the  same  thing, 
speaking  of  the  rule  that  the  artist  must  first 
put  himself  at  a  distance  from  Nature  **in 
order  to  return  to  her  with  full  effect,"  because 
mere  painful  copying  would  produce  only 
'*  masks,  not  forms  breathing  life."  A  fourth 
writes  to  me  of  his  love-poems :  '*  I  never 
write  a  love-poem,"  he  says,  **but  what  I  have 
some  real  woman  in  my  mind ;  either  one 
I  have  met  in  the  past  or  one  I  meet  now, 
and  whose  looks  I  like.  Perhaps  the  woman 
that  has  affected  me  most  was  one  I  met  on 

46 


Women  and  Inspiration 

the  Thames  Embankment,  whom  I  had  never 
met  before  and  have  not  seen  since.  I  fol- 
lowed her  about  for  a  considerable  time,  and 
noticed  that  every  one,  no  matter  of  what  age 
or  station  in  life,  stared  hard  at  her.  Her 
own  apparent  indifference  gave  them  a  good 
chance  to  do  this.  It  was  with  much  disap- 
pointment that  I  at  last  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  she  had  nothing  to  do  with  me  and  let 
her  pass  out  of  sight.  I  was  thinking  of 
that  woman  when  I  wrote  ."  He  con- 
tinues:  ''The  poem  called  was  written 

after  hearing  a  woman,  whom  I  had  taken  a 
fancy  to,  laughing  a  welcome  to  another.  It 
was  the  sweetest  laugh  that  I  have  ever  heard, 
beginning  quite  merrily  and  ending  in  a  sweet 
sad  fall  that  died  away  softly."    Again  :  *'  The 

poem    called    was    written    from   the 

memory  of  how  a  bird  at  home  used  to  burst 
out  singing  when  he  heard  my  sister  s  voice. 
And  yet  it  was  always  I  that  fed  him,  and 
in  fact  troubled  myself  so  much  about  his  life 
and  comfort  that  my  sister  was  jealous  and 
wished  him  dead."  One  writer  seems  to  con- 
tradict what  Coleridge  says  by  the  statement 
that  what  he  has  done  best  was  done  under 
the  almost  crushing  weight  of  painful  memory, 
and  fearful  expectation  which  it  described. 
But  the  truth  probably  is  that  even  here  the 
same    ripening  took   place,   but  with   fierce 

47 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

rapidity,  as  flower  seeds  hurry  to  ripeness 
in  the  breath  of  the  fire.  Says  another : 
*'  Love  satisfied  of  itself  would,  I  suppose,  be 
complete  and  would  need  no  literature ;  but 
the  heat  and  burden  of  desire  seek  to  record 
something."  Having  been  moved  by  beautiful 
things  *'  an  instinct  rebukes  any  *  use '  of 
such  feelings ;  but  they  rise  easily,  as  I  write, 
out  of  a  store  of  images  unconsciously  accu- 
mulated." And  so  we  are  brought  round  to 
Keats  and  Rossetti  again. 


48 


chapter  "Three:  Women  as  Poets 

IT  would  not  be  easy  to  show  that  women 
have  had  any  great  influence  upon 
English  poetry  by  their  own  practice  of 
the  art.  Far  too  often  they  have  written  as 
if  they  were  only  an  inferior  kind  of  man. 
They  have  written,  as  they  still  often  write, 
love-poems  upon  a  masculine  model.  ''The 
Complaint  of  a  Lover,"  for  example,  was 
written  by  the  gifted  and  early  dead  Anne 
Killigrew  (1660-1685)  as  if  from  a  man  : 

See'st  thou  yonder  craggy  rock, 

Whose  head  o  erlooks  the  swelling  main. 

Where  never  shepherd  fed  his  flock, 
Or  careful  peasant  sow'd  his  grain. 

No  wholesome  herb  grows  on  the  same, 

Or  bird  of  day  will  on  it  rest ; 
'Tis  barren  as  the  hopeless  flame 

That  scorches  my  tormented  breast —  ~ 

yet  the  image  is  one  of  the  grandest  in 
poetry.  Women  are  more  earthly  than  men, 
more  directly  and  practically  connected  with 
the  circumstances  and  foundations  of  life. 
The  earth  and  this  life  are  nearly  good 
enough  for  them ;  not  from  them  has  there 
ever  been  much  whining  about  their  souls 
and  immortality.  There  are  more  Marthas 
to  be  found  than  Marys.     They  do  not  easily 

D  49 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

detach  themselves  from  things  as  they  are 
here  and  now,  and  are  less  inclined  than  men 
to  see  themselves  as  a  spectacle.  Something 
of  the  truth  at  least  appears  in  some  lines 
prefixed  by  Mary  Morpeth  to  Drummond's 
poems  of  1656: 

Then  do  not  sparks  with  your  bright  suns  compare, 
Perfection  in  a  woman's  work  is  rare  ; 
From  an  untroubled  mind  should  verses  flow ; 
My  discontents  make  mine  too  muddy  show  ; 
And  hoarse  encumbrances  of  household  care. 
Where  these  remain  the  Muses  ne'er  repair. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  it  is  true  of  women 
what  every  poet  says  at  one  time  or  another 
of  himself,  that  he  thinks  **good  thoughts, 
whilst  other  write  good  words,"  that  he  writes 
ill  because  he  is  so  sincere : 

Then  others  for  the  breath  of  words  respect, 
Me  for  my  dumb  thoughts,  speaking  in  effect. 

So  Shakespeare  puts  it.  As  men  have  written 
little  poetry  upon  love  for  their  friends,  so 
women  have  written  very  little  expressing 
their  affection  for  lovers  or  children.  It  is 
rare  for  a  woman  to  write  as  Aphra  Behn 
(1640- 1 689)  did,  giving  as  good  as  she 
receives,  after  this  fashion  : 

When  my  Alexis  present  is, 
Then  I  for  Damon  sigh  and  mourn  ; 
But  when  Alexis  I  do  miss, 
Damon  gains  nothing  but  my  scorn. 

50 


Women  as  Poets 

But  if  it  chance  they  both  are  by, 
For  both  aHke  I  languish,  sigh  and  die. 
Cure  then,  thou  mighty  winged  God, 
This  restless  fever  in  my  blood  ; 
One  golden  pointed  dart  take  back  : 
But  which,  O  Cupid,  wilt  thou  take  ? 
If  Damon,  all  my  hopes  are  crost ; 
Or  that  of  my  Alexis,  I  am  lost. 

This  is  so  much  like  a  man^s  poem  with 
*'  Alexis "  and  '*  Damon  "  substituted  for 
'*  Corinna  "  and  ''  Chloe  "  that  it  may  possibly 
have  been  written  as  a  deliberate  revenge. 
Perhaps  not  so  much  can  be  said  of  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu's  (1690-1762)  ballad, 
'*The  Lover."  She  explains  why  she  is  not 
in  a  hurry  to  love ;  not  because  she  is  cold, 
but  because  she  fears  to  be  cheated  and  will  not 
buy  '*  long  years  of  repentance  for  moments 
of  joy.''  She  wants  a  man  who  is  no  pedant, 
yet  learned,  obliging  and  free  to  all  her  sex, 
but  fond  only  of  her : 

When  the  long  hours  in  public  are  past, 
And  we  meet  with  champagne  and  a  chicken  at  last, 
May  every  fond  pleasure  that  moment  endear ; 
Be  banish'd  afar  both  discretion  and  fear ! 
Forgetting  or  scorning  the  airs  of  the  crowd. 
He  may  cease  to  be  formal,  and  I  to  be  proud. 
Till  lost  in  the  joy,  we  confess  that  we  live. 
And  he  may  be  rude  and  yet  I  may  forgive. 

It  is  a  middle-aged  ambition,  and  suggests 
the  woman  who  in  becoming  the  equal  of 

51 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

men  and  in  seeing  much  of  them  has  become 
very  much  like  them.  Not  even  Suckling  has 
coupled  love  with  champagne  and  chicken  in 
poetry,  though  he  and  many  another  knew 
that  in  fact  they  often  are  so  coupled.  It  is 
much  commoner  to  find  the  poetesses  writing 
of  the  sober  devotion  of  a  wife.  The  lines 
**  To  my  Husband  "  of  an  anonymous  seven- 
teenth-century writer  have  a  sound  of  the 
best  epitaphs.  The  conclusion  justifies  it  as 
a  piece  of  true  genius  : 

When  from  the  world  I  should  be  taen, 
And  from  earth's  necessary  pain, 
Then  let  no  blacks  be  worn  for  me, 
Not  in  a  ring,  my  dear,  by  thee. 
But  this  bright  diamond,  let  it  be 
Worn  in  remembrance  of  me. 
And  when  it  sparkles  in  your  eye, 
Think  'tis  my  shadow  passeth  by. 

The  *' necessary  pain"  is  characteristic  of 
many  poems  by  women.  The  verses  written 
to  her  husband  in  London  by  the  Hon.  Mary 
Monk  (17 1 5),  as  she  lay  on  her  death-bed  at 
Bath,  are  marvellously  like  what  her  husband 
might  have  put  into  her  mouth  in  an  epitaph. 
None  the  less,  she  may  be  sincere  when  she 
says  that  Death  woos  her  ''with  a  cheerful 
grace  "  and  without  one  terror,  promising  her 
''a  lasting  rest  from  pain,"  showing  her  that 
52 


Women  as  Poets 

''  lifers  joys  are  vain,"  and  when  she  bids  her 
husband 

Rejoice  to  see  me  shake  off  life, 

And  die  as  I  have  lived,  thy  faithful  wife. 

Elizabeth  Toilet  (1694-1754)  has  a  winter 
song  to  a  lover  in  which  she  professes  herself 
willing  to  go  anywhere  with  him,  like  the 
Nut-Brown  Maid  : 

The  softest  moss  should  dress  thy  bed, 
With  savage  spoils  about  thee  spread  ; 
While  faithful  love  the  watch  should  keep, 
To  banish  danger  from  thy  sleep. 

This  is  unusually  romantic.  It  may,  how- 
ever, be  matched  by  a  passage  from  Eliza 
Hey  wood  (i  693-1 756),  where  she  makes 
Ximene,  fearing  to  be  forsaken  by  Palaemon, 
desire  him  to  kill  her  : 

Tis  kinder  far  to  kill  than  to  forsake  '.   .  . 
But  now  to  die — now,  in  my  joy's  high  noon, 
Ere  the  cold  evening  of  contempt  comes  on, 
Were  to  die  blest. 

Hannah  Cowley  (1743- 1809)  sounds  a  more 
familiar  note  in  ''Edwin  and  the  Huntress" 
with  her 

O  marriage  !  powerful  charm,  gift  all  divine 

Sent  from  the  skies,  o'er  life's  drear  waste  to  shine. 

In  her  opinion,  Satan  envied  nothing  in  Eden 

53 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

until  ''  in  the  married  pair,  he  felt  mankind 
were  blest." 

This  is  in  the  same  lofty  sphere  as  Mrs. 
Barbauld's  teaching  a  fond  youth  what  it  is 
to  love : 

It  is  to  gaze  upon  her  eyes, 

With  eager  joy  and  fond  surprise  ; 
Yet  tempered  with  such  chaste  and  awful  fear 

As  wretches  feel  who  wait  their  doom  ; 

Nor  must  one  ruder  thought  presume, 
Tho'  but  in  whispers  breath'd,  to  meet  her  ear. 

The  blushing  Psyche  in  Mrs.  Tighe's  poem 
must  have  been  to  the  same  school,  for  she 
let  fall  in  the  breast  of  Eros  ''  a  tear  of 
trembling  ecstasy  "  upon  his  arrival. 

With  this  should  be  contrasted  the  aban- 
doned Mary  Masters  and  her — 

Seek  not  to  know  my  passion  s  spring, 

The  reason  to  discover  ; 
For  reason  is  a  useless  thing, 

When  we've  commenced  the  lover. 

In  spite  of  mediocrity,  a  fair  number  of 
poems  or  passages  may  be  found  expressing 
a  woman's  point  of  view  and  addressed  to 
women.  Lady  Chudleigh  (1656-1710)  has 
learnt  that  *'wife  and  servant  are  the  same,'* 
and  she  bade  women  value  themselves  and 
despise  men,  and  know  that  to  be  proud  is  to 
be  wise.    Swift's  Stella,  Esther  Johnson,  suc- 

54 


Women  as  Poets 

ceeds  apparently  in  being  sincere  as  well  as 
lucid  and  emphatic  in  her  lines  on  jealousy, 
which  no  man  could  have  written  unless  a 
woman  had  supplied  him  with  the  sentiment : 

0  shield  me  from  his  rage,  celestial  Powers ! 
This  tyrant  that  embitters  all  my  hours. 

Ah,  Love  !  you've  poorly  played  the  heroes  part, 
You  conquer'd,  but  you  can't  defend  my  heart. 
When  first  I  bent  beneath  your  gentle  reign, 

1  thought  this  monster  banish'd  from  your  train  : 
But  you  would  raise  him  to  support  your  throne, 
And  now  he  claims  your  empire  as  his  own ; 

Or  tell  me,  tyrants,  have  you  both  agreed 
That  where  one  reigns,  the  other  shall  succeed  ? 

Swift  wrote  nothing  that  comes  so  near 
poetry  as  this,  but  he  was  born  incapable  of 
poetry,  and  in  any  case  was  unteachable  by 
woman. 

Catharine  Cockburn  (1679- 1749)  offers  this 
caution  to  a  girl : 

Keep  ever  something  in  thy  power. 
Beyond  what  would  thy  honour  stain  : 

He  will  not  dare  to  aim  at  more. 
Who  for  small  favours  sighs  in  vain. 

The  '^Auld  Robin  Gray"  of  Lady  Anne 
Barnard  (1750- 1825)  expresses  the  common 
experience  of  a  woman,  especially  in  the  last 
line  of  the  following  verse,  after  a  manner 
which  suggests  folk-song : 

55 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

When  the  sheep  are  in  the  fauld,   and  when  the 

cows  come  hame, 
When  a'  the  weary  world  to  quiet  rest  are  gane, 
The  woes  of  my  heart  fa  in  showers  fra  ma  ee, 
Unkenn'd  by  my  gudeman,  who  soundly  sleeps  by  me. 

Hannah  Mora's  (1745-1833)  ''Simplicity*' 
is  as  distinctly  feminine,  both  in  its  view  that 
"life's  best  joys  consist  in  peace  and  ease" 
and  in  its  appeal  against  those  who  weep  over 
*'The  Sorrows  of  Werther"  while  the 
children  starve  : 

O  Love  divine !  sole  source  of  Charity ! 
More  dear  one  genuine  deed  perform'd  for  thee, 
Than  all  the  periods  feeling  e'er  could  turn, 
Than  all  thy  touching  page,  perverted  Sterne. 

Georgiana,  Duchess  of  Devonshire  (1757- 
1806),  Coleridge's  Duchess,  is  one  of  the  few 
women  whose  poems  to  their  children  survive. 
She  addressed  to  her  children  the  long  lyric 
narrative  upon  a  passage  of  the  St.  Gothard 
which  Coleridge  praised,  a  poem  full  of  a 
love  for  Italy  and  Switzerland,  the  mountains, 
the  high  lakes,  the  flowers,  and  the  memory 
of  William  Tell,  expressed  in  a  flowing 
enthusiastic  manner  which  suggests  a  person- 
ality more  attractive  in  other  spheres  than 
poetry.     The  poem  ends  : 

Hope  of  my  life  !  dear  children  of  my  heart ! 

That  anxious  heart,  to  each  fond  feeling  true, 
To  you  still  pants  each  pleasure  to  impart. 

And  more — oh  transport ! — reach  its  home  in  you. 

56 


Women  as  Poets 

Charlotte  Smith  (1749- 1806)  looked  at 
children  playing,  and  her  heart  was  oppressed 
by  fears  for  their  future  fate,  and  her  eyes 
filled  with  tears.  There  is  no  great  poem 
expressing  the  love  of  a  mother  or  of  a 
father. 

Resignation,  a  meek  sadness,  a  longing 
after  content,  patience,  health,  and  peace,  if 
possible  in  the  country,  are  very  noticeable  in 
the  poems  of  women.  Anne  Collins  (1653) 
was  the  author  of  a  resigned  spring  song, 
breathing  a  modest  content  **  however  things 
do  fall."  Katharine  Phillips  (1631-1664) 
wrote  an  **  Ode  against  Pleasure  "  : 

For  many  things  must  make  it  be, 
But  one  may  make  it  less. 

She  consoles  herself  because  '*  when  our 
fortune's  most  severe,  the  less  we  have,  the 
less  we  fear."  Frances  Sheridan  (1724- 
1767),  the  mother  of  R.  B.  Sheridan,  wrote  an 
''  Ode  to  Patience  " — Patience  the  '*  Heaven- 
descended  Maid."  Another  lady  of  that  age 
wrote  a  ''  Prayer  for  Indifference."  She 
wanted  nothing  but 

For  my  guest  serenely  calm 
The  nymph  Indifference  bring  ! 

The  *'  nymph  "  Indifference  I 

This   resignation  easily  turns  to  sadness. 

57 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Anne  Finch,  Countess  of  Winchelsea  (1720), 
looks  back  sadly  on  life's  progress,  when  she 


thinks 


How  gaily  is  it  first  begun 
Our  life's  uncertain  race. 


Elizabeth  Rowe  (1674-1736)  sings  Despair 
with  a  sought  luxury  of  wretchedness  not 
usual  in  her  time.  **Lead  me,"  she  cries,  *'to 
some  solitary  gloom  "  far  from  the  world's 
'*  wretched  pleasures  and  distracted  joys," 
and — 

There  in  a  melting,  solemn,  dying  strain, 
Let  me  all  day  upon  my  lyre  complain, 
And  wind  up  all  its  soft  harmonious  strings, 
To  noble,  serious,  melancholy  things.  .  .  . 

There  to  my  fatal  sorrows  let  me  give 
The  short  remaining  hours  I  have  to  live. 
Then,  with  a  sullen,  deep-fetch'd  groan  expire, 
And  to  the  grave  s  dark  solitude  retire. 

This  anticipates  the  febrile  misery  of  Mary 
Robinson  (i 758-1800),  with  her  lines  to  a 
friend  who  is  a  friend  no  more,  threatening 
to  leave  her  country  and  wander  through 
tempest  and  over  desert  and  sea  upon  a  long 
business  of  lamentation ;  with  her  lines 
written  to  a  snowdrop,  a  flower  dear  to  her 
because  she  has  so  often  herself  *'wept  and 
shrunk  like  thee."  This  is  Anne  Seward's 
(i  747-1809)    vein,     sorrowing     over     love, 

58 


Women  as  Poets 

youth,  separation  and  the  past  with  hysterical 
triviality,  but  not  insincerely,  for  she  is 
genuine  enough  in  her  anticipation  of  death's 
terror : 

Since  in  the  silent  grave,  no  talk ! — no  music ! — 
No  gay  surprise  by  unexpected  good, 
Social  or  individual ! 

So  Henrietta,  Lady  O'Neill  (1758-93)  wrote 
an  '^Ode  to  the  Poppy": 

Soul-soothing  plant  that  can  such  blessings  give, 
By  thee  the  mourner  bears  to  live ! 
By  thee  the  hopeless  die ! 

So  also  Charlotte  Smith  calls  the  nightin- 
gale "  dear  to  sorrow  and  to  love  "  ;  mourns 
enviously  over  the  grave  of  a  young  woman 
of  nineteen — ''  I  would,  sweet  maid,  thy 
humble  bed  were  mine"  ;  and  writes  a  sonnet 
to  the  Moon : 

And  oft  I  think,  fair  planet  of  the  night. 
That  in  thy  orb  the  wretched  may  have  rest. 

A  fancy  which  she  has  not  weight  enough  in 
her  character  to  recommend. 

The  love  of  simplicity,  rusticity,  and  health- 
fulness  is  more  amiable.  Katharine  Phillips 
thinks  the  golden  age  happy,  in  friendship 
and  in  health,  because  ''  On  roots,  not  beasts, 
they  fed."     And  *'  Silence  and  innocence  are 

59 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

safe  "  in  the  country  life  which  she  desires. 
Anne,  Marchioness  of  Wharton  (1685),  wrote 
verses  on  the  ''  Snuff  of  a  Candle  "  during  a 
sickness,  calling  upon  *'  Health  !  best  part 
and  substance  of  our  joy."  Frances  Brooke 
(1789)  wrote  an  ''  Ode  to  Health  " — *'  Divinest 
maid,"  &c.  Mary  Chandler  (1687-1745) 
wrote  a  panegyric  with  many  O's  to  '*  Temper- 
ance." The  Countess  of  Winchelsea  is  cele- 
brated, if  not  well  known,  for  her  love  of 
Nature.  Her  poetry  is  at  least  full  of 
observation  and  genuine  sentiment,  while 
her  "  Nocturnal  Reverie,"  opening  though  it 
does  with  *' Gentle  Zephyr"  and  '*  Lonely 
Philomel,"  makes  us  feel  that  she  has  had 
the  magical  experience  which  has  been  per- 
fectly expressed  only  by  much  later  poets. 
She  describes  a  summer  evening  : 

Their  short-liv'd  jubilee  the  creatures  keep, 

Which  but  endures  whilst  tyrant  man  does  sleep ; 

When  a  sedate  content  the  spirit  feels, 

And  no  fierce  light  disturbs,  whilst  it  reveals  ; 

But  silent  musings  urge  the  mind  to  seek 

Something  too  high  for  syllables  to  speak ; 

Till  the  free  soul  to  a  composedness  charm'd, 

Finding  the  elements  of  rage  disarmed, 

O'er  all  below  a  solemn  quiet  grown, 

Joys  in  th*  inferior  world,  and  thinks  it  like  her  own : 

In  such  a  night  let  me  abroad  remain, 

Till  morning  breaks,  and  all's  confused  again, 

Our  cares,  our  toils,  our  clamours  are  renewed. 

Our  pleasures,  seldom  reached,  again  pursued. 

60 


Women  as  Poets 

The  "  sedate  content "  of  this  particular 
complexion  was  certainly  singular  in  her  age. 
Mary  Leapor  (i 722-1 746),  a  real  gardener's 
daughter,  wrote  '*  The  Temple  of  Love  :  a 
Dream,"  in  which  there  is  a  temple  of  Cytherea 
and  in  it  a  blooming  damsel  and  a  wealthy 
swain  attended  by  Riot,  Pride,  Flattery,  Pomp, 
Pleasure,  and  Folly.  The  temple  shakes : 
Suspicion,  Loathing,  Hate,  and  Rage  enter, 
and  the  hall  fills  with  tumult.  The  dream 
changes  to  a  ''  ruined  nymph  "  amid  gloomy 
walls,  with  phantoms  of  Reproach,  Scandal, 
Despair,  and  Death.  In  the  eclogue  of  "  The 
Month  of  August "  a  courtier  woos  a  country 
Phillis.     Her  reply  is  pretty  : 

Believe  me,  I  can  find  no  charms  at  all 
In  your  fine  carpets  and  your  painted  hall. 
'Tis  true  our  parlour  has  an  earthen  floor, 
The  sides  of  plaster  and  of  elm  the  door  ; 
Yet  the  rubb'd  chest  and  table  sweetly  shines 
And  the  spread  mint  along  the  window  climbs. 

She  is  for  her  ''  long-keeping  russets "  and 
Catherine  pears.  She  departs  to  the  harvest 
feast  with  Corydon : 

Then  beef  and  coleworts,  beans  and  bacon  too, 
And  the  plum-pudding  of  delicious  hue, 
Sweet-spiced  cake  and  apple  pies  good  store, 
Deck  the  brown  board,  and  who  can  wish  for  more  ? 

In   the   same   key   Henrietta,   Lady  Lux- 
borough,   Shenstone's   friend,   contrasts   the 

61 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

artificial  song  of  the  caged  bullfinch  with  the 
song  of  the  wild  blackbird.  Miss  or  Mrs. 
Pennington  (1759)  is  also  among  the 
eighteenth-century  Arcadians.  Her  ''  Ode  to 
Morning  *'  records  her  preference  for  the  fields 
to  bed  on  a  spring  morning.  Hester  Chapone 
(i 727-1 801),  who  would  probably  have  mar- 
ried Gilbert  White  if  any  woman  could,  wrote 
an  '*  Ode  to  Solitude,"  but  chiefly  because  it 
was  the  '*  nurse  of  pleasing  woe,"  the  play- 
ground of  Fancy,  and  the  home  of  Resigna- 
tion. I  like  Anna  Seward's  December 
morning  in  1782  : 

I  love  to  rise  ere  gleams  the  tardy  light, 
Winter's  pale  dawn  ; — and  as  warm  fires  illume 
And  cheerful  tapers  shine  around  the  room, 
Thro'  misty  windows  bend  my  musing  sight, 
Where,  round  the  dusky  lawn,  the  mansions  white, 

With  shutters  clos'd,  peer  faintly  thro'  the  gloom, 

That  slow  recedes ;  while  yon  grey  spires  assume, 
Rising  from  their  dark  pile,  an  added  height 
By  indistinctness  given. — Then  to  decree 

The  grateful  thoughts  to  God,  ere  they  unfold 
To  Friendship,  or  the  Muse,  or  seek  with  glee 

Wisdom's  rich  page  : — O  hours  !  more  worth  than 
gold, 
By  whose  blest  use  we  lengthen  life,  and  free 

From  drear  decays  of  age,  outlive  the  old. 

It  is  a  most  delicate  and  original  picture,  and 
though  she  wishes  to  over-emphasise  the 
emotion  of  the  hour  she  cannot  spoil  its 
62 


Women  as  Poets 

charm.  Charlotte  Smith's  **  Beachy  Head  " 
has  some  pleasant  recollections  of  Down 
scenery,  an  old  cottage-garden  at  the  foot  of 
a  hill,  the  hedgerows  and  the  unfrequented 
lanes,  **  warrens  and  heaths  and  yellow 
commons,"  and  bowers  where  *'  the  dew  fills 
the  silver  bindweed's  cups  "  ;  and  she  makes 
an  effective  contrast  between  wild  Nature  and 
the  Abbey  of  St.  Monica,  now  overgrown 
with  weeds,  where  the  pilgrim  once  came  to 
pray : 

O  Nature !  ever  lovely,  ever  new, 
He  who  his  earliest  vows  has  paid  to  you 
Still  finds  that  life  has  something  to  bestow  ; 
And  while  to  dark  Forgetfulness  they  go, 
Man,  and  the  works  of  man — immortal  Youth, 
Unfading  Beauty,  and  Eternal  Truth, 
Your  Heaven-indicted  volume  will  display, 
While  Art's  elaborate  monuments  decay, 
Even  as  these  shatter'd  aisles,  deserted  Monica; 

It  may  be  said  of  this  poetry  written  by 
women  between  1600  and  1800  that  it  is 
mostly  like  that  of  the  contemporary  men. 
It  differs  because  it  is  inferior,  yet  that  is 
not  the  only  difference.  It  cannot  indeed  be 
called  a  body  of  distinctively  feminine  thought 
and  emotion  ;  to  call  it  that  would  be  flatter- 
ing to  the  poetry  and  unfair  to  the  women  of 
those  generations.  But  it  does  express  some- 
thing of  the  woman's  point  of  view,  and  it  is 

63 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

coloured  over  by  a  feminine  colouring  and  as 
much  by  a  lack  of  masculine  colouring.  I 
think  also  that  it  bears  almost  as  much 
resemblance  to  the  poetry  written  since  the 
romantic  revival  as  to  contemporary  work,  and 
that  this  means  an  increasing  feminine  element 
in  the  character  of  poets,  due  partly  to  the 
refinement  of  the  conditions  of  life  which  are 
favourable  also  to  women,  and  partly  to  the 
direct  influence  of  women  themselves,  not  to 
their  poetry. 


64 


chapter  Four :  Women,  Nature 
and  Poetry 

IN  Stella's  face,  says  Sidney,  he  reads 
what  Love  and  Beauty  are,  and  all  his 
task  is  but  copying  what  Nature  writes 
in  her.  Sterne,  at  the  end  of  his  life,  in  bad 
health,  and  separated  from  the  married  woman 
whom  he  adored,  told  her  that  he  would  give 
her  husband  five  hundred  pounds  to  let  her 
sit  by  him  two  hours  a  day  while  he  wrote 
''The  Sentimental  Journey,"  and  that  he 
would  be  reimbursed  more  than  seven  times 
over.  A  score  of  poets  say  the  same  thing  in.^^^^ 
different  ways.  Women  have  influenced  them  / 
chiefly  through  love,  and  one  of  the  common- 
places of  love-poetry,  where  their  influence  is 
clearest,  is  that  the  mistress  is  its  inspira- 
tion. The  commonplace  is  in  the  expression 
not  in  the  fact  which,  if  true,  is  never 
commonplace.  And  it  probably  is  true  that 
the  earliest  and  strongest  of  traceable  im- 
pulses to  write  have  come  from  women.  The 
other  impulses  are  now  dark  and  old,  detected 
by  few,  and  by  still  fewer  spoken  of,  having 
passed  long  ago  into  a  dumb  tradition. 
Chief  among  these  impulses  must  be  some 
form  of  the  desire  to  impress  the  plastic  world 
of  men,  to  be  conspicuous,  to  create,  to 
possess,  to  extend  the  personality  in  such  a 

E  65 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

way  that  it  can  be  said,  Not  all  of  me  shall 
die  when  the  breath  goes  finally  out  of 
my  body.  Probably  John  Clare  heard  this 
impulse  when  he  lay  under  the  huge  elm, 
the  '*  Shepherd's  tree,"  thinking  of  past  times 
and  deeds,  until — 

The  wind  of  that  eternal  ditty  sings 
Humming  of  future  things,  that  turn  the  mind 
To  leave  some  fragment  of  itself  behind. 

And  Shelley  heard  it  in  that  universal  west 
wind  that  made  him  feel  his  own  weakness 
and  yet  cry  to  the  wind  :  **  Make  me  thy  lyre 
even  as  the  forest  is,"  and  **  Drive  my  dead 
thoughts  over  the  universe  like  withered 
leaves  to  quicken  a  new  birth."  And  so  lovely 
is  the  calm  immortal  and  unchanging  world 
of  imagination  and  of  art  that,  in  apparent 
disloyalty  to  life,  it  is  desired  even  amidst 
life  in  its  supremacy,  because  it  is  a  world 
inaccessible  to  age,  winter,  hatred,  tyranny, 
disease,  stupidity,  or  death.  It  is  easiest  in 
the  presence  of  Nature  for  the  poet  or  another 
to  reach  this  harbour  of  Eternity  that  is  in 
the  coasts  of  mere  time,  and  to  divide  women 
or  love  from  Nature  in  the  inspiration  of 
poetry  is  next  to  impossible. 

A  German  writer  on  '*  The  Development  of 
the  feeling  for  Nature  in  the  Middle  Ages 
and  Modern  Times,"  Alfred  Biese,  discovers 
66 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

in  **  the  amorous  passion  "  the  soil  in  which 
the  sympathy  with  Nature  first  began  to  grow, 
and  he  quotes  from  a  troubadour  this  modern 
thought  at  the  rising  of  a  lark  :  **  Strange 
that  such  gladdening  sight  should  bring  not 
joy,  but  care  to  me." 

Richard  Jefferies  has  used  the  character  of 

Felise  in  his  ''  Dewy  Morn  '*  to  show  not  only 

how  the  beauty  of  humanity  and  of  Nature 

is  mingled  in  the  form  of  that  girl,  but  how 

in  the  presence  of  Nature  love  swelled  within 

her  breast  before  she  had  a  lover.     It  is  a  lover, 

Jefferies  himself,  who  says  that  **  the  whole  face 

of  earth  and  sky  ministered  to  her,  each  and 

all  that  made  up  the  visible  world  was  flung 

at  her  feet.     They  did  homage — Felise,  queen 

of  herself,  was  queen  of  all."     In  her  heart 

was    *Move  without  a  lover";    *'pure   love, 

pure  as  the  spring-water  that  comes  from  the 

hills,  was  there  ready  to  be  poured  forth.'' 

Before  she  saw  her  lover  her  heart  was  lost : 

she  lost  it  among  the  flowers,  in  the  wind,  by 

the   stream,    among   her   books,  among  the 

stars  :  and  though  her  vigour  of  life  was  great, 

it  was  not  that  which  made  her  so  strong  and 

beautiful  and  energetic,  but  love.     *'  If  such 

a   great   and    noble  woman,"  says  Jefferies, 

*' were  enclosed  in  a  prison  from  youth,  and 

permitted  no  sight  of  man,  still  to  the  end  y^ 

of  existence  she  would  love."  T  Shelley  uses 

_ — ^  67 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

almost  the  same  words  in  his  ''On  Love" 
where  he  says  that  *'  In  soHtude,  or  that 
deserted  state  when  we  are  surrounded  by 
human  beings  and  yet  they  sympathise  not 
with  us,  we  love  the  flowers,  the  grass,  the 
waters,  and  the  sky.  In  the  motion  of  the 
very  leaves  of  spring,  in  the  blue  air,  there  is 
then  found  a  secret  correspondence  with  our 
heart.  There  is  eloquence  in  the  tongueless 
wind,  and  a  melody  in  the  flowing  brooks  and 
the  rustling  of  the  reeds  beside  them,  which 
by  their  inconceivable  relation  to  something 
within  the  soul,  awaken  the  spirits  to  a  dance 
of  breathless  rapture,  and  bring  tears  of 
mysterious  tenderness  to  the  eyes,  like  the 
enthusiasm  of  patriotic  success,  or  the  voice 
of  one  beloved  singing  to  you  alone.  Sterne 
says  that  if  he  were  in  a  desert  he  would 
love  some  cypress.  So  soon  as  this  want  or 
power  is  dead,  man  becomes  a  living  sepulchre 
of  himself,  and  what  yet  survives  is  the  mere 
husk  of  what  once  he  was." 

In  the  ballads  and  folk-songs  women  are 
thus  connected  with  Nature  a  thousand  times) 
"  As  I  walked  forth  one  Midsummer  morning 
a-viewing  the  meadows  and  to  take  the  air  " 
is  always  prelusive  to  an  unexpected  meeting 
of  love.  They  love,  and  they  even  bear  their 
children,  in  some  bower  "in  the  good  green 
wood  among  the  lily  flower."  But  alas  I 
68 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

during  the  Renaissance  the  natural  was 
almost  obscured  by  the  pastoral  in  the  formal 
poetry  of  love.  Scotland  was  preserved  from 
a  disaster  of  equal  extent  by  a  less  complete 
submission  to  an  urban  civilisation  and  by 
the  survival  of  a  stout  provincialism.  The 
influence  of  Nature  and  the  influence  of 
woman  survive  in  Scottish  song,  and  they 
survive  together.     It  is  full  of — 

Ca  the  yowes  to  the  knowes, 
Ca'  them  whare  the  heather  grows, 
Ca'  them  whare  the  burnie  rows, 
My  bonnie  dearie 

instead  of — 

Come  live  with  me  and  be  my  Love 

And  we  will  all  the  pleasures  prove 
That  hills  and  valleys,  dale  and  field. 
And  all  the  craggy  mountains  yield. 

Where  England  yields — 

The  opening  flowers  where'er  she  went 
Diffus'd  their  tributary  scent. 


and 


O  blessed  brook  !  whose  milk-white 

swans  adore 
Thy  crystal  stream,  refined  by  her  eyes. 


Scotland  has 


The  bonny  bush  aboon  Traquair 
Was  where  1  first  did  love  her  . 


69 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

and  it  has  the  songs  of  Burns  and  of  those 
worthy  singing  peers  and  predecessors  who 
helped  to  make  him  the  first  of  them  all. 
Their  women  are  Scotch  women  and  their 
country  is  Scotch  country,  but  it  cannot  be 
said  of  the  women  or  the  country  in  many 
English  poets  between  the  Renaissance  and 
the  Romantic  Revival  that  they  are  English. 
When  that  Revival  came  women  and  Nature 
were  once  more  to  be  seen  inseparable  and  in 
harmony :  Wordsworth,  for  example,  nearly 
always  used  women  to  obtain  his  wildest  and 
loveliest  natural  effects,  as  in  *' Ruth,"  ''The 
Affliction  of  Margaret,"  **The  Complaint  of 
a  Forsaken  Indian  Woman,"  *'  Margaret," 
''Beggars,"  "To  Joanna"  (that  wild-hearted 
maid),  the  "  Highland  Girl,"  "  She  was  a 
Phantom  of  Delight,"  "  Stepping  Westward," 
"The  Solitary  Reaper,"  "Three  Years  she 
Grew,"  "The  Thorn,"  and  "Lucy  Gray." 
Many  of  these  women  are,  in  fact,  more  like 
the  spirits  or  nymphs  of  certain  places  than 
human  beings.  Take,  for  instance,  "  The 
Solitary  Reaper."  This  is  founded  upon  a 
sentence  in  Thomas  Wilkinson's  "Tours  to 
the  British  Mountains,"  where  he  tells  of  a 
woman  reaping  alone,  singing  in  Erse  as  she 
bent  over  her  sickle,  in  the  sweetest  human 
voice  he  had  ever  heard,  and  how  her  strains 
were  tenderly  melancholy  and  "  felt  delicious 
70 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

long  after  they  were  heard  no  more."  Even 
in  the  first  verse  of  the  poem  she  is  only 
a  voice.  In  the  second  verse  the  humanity  of 
the  voice  escapes  in  the  comparison  for  sweet- 
ness to  a  nightingale  '*  among  Arabian  sands  " 
and  for  its  thrilling  quality  to  the  cuckoo 

Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides. 

Though  he  returns  to  her  and  to  mankind 
in  the  next,  it  is  to  mankind  remote  and 
spiritualised  into  something  like  a  sound  of 
waters  or  trees.  The  last  verse  leaves  her  a 
voice  once  more,  a  music  within  the  brain 
so  separate  from  the  woman  that  he  bears  it 
with  him  long  after  she  was  heard  no  more. 
Then,  again,  take  the  ''  Highland  Girl." 
Wordsworth  and  his  sister  saw  her  at  Inver- 
sneyde  upon  Loch  Lomond  in  August  1803, 
and  he  had  a  most  vivid  remembrance  of  her 
forty  years  later,  in  his  seventy-third  year. 
She  was  daughter  to  a  ferryman,  innocent  and 
merry, ''exceedingly  beautiful  and  pronouncing 
English  sweetly,  but,  as  we  do  a  foreign  speech, 
slowly."  She  and  the  scene  were  ''  like  some- 
thing fashioned  in  a  dream."  He  calls  her  a 
*'  dream  and  vision,"  and  though  he  sees  her 
*'  benignity  and  home-bred  sense,"  he  dreams 
of  the  pleasure  of  dwelling  there  with  her  : 

A  shepherd,  thou  a  shepherdess ! — 

71 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

and  then  recalls  that  she  is  to  him  *'but  as  a 
wave  of  the  wild  sea."  He  would  wish  to 
have  some  claim  upon  her  : 

Thy  elder  Brother  I  would  be, 
Thy  Father,  any  thing  to  thee  ! 

But  see  how  he  ends.  He  is  not  loth  to  part 
from  her : 

Nor  am  I  loth,  though  pleased  at  heart. 
Sweet  Highland  Girl !  from  Thee  to  part ; 
For  I,  methinks,  till  I  grow  old. 
As  fair  before  me  shall  behold. 
As  I  do  now,  the  Cabin  small, 
The  Lake,  the  Bay,  the  Waterfall ; 
And  Thee,  the  Spirit  of  them  all. 

He  has  got  within  him  all  of  her  that  is 
related  to  himself,  and  is  content  to  go,  very 
wisely  and  comfortably.  So  also  in  ''Step- 
ping Westward,"  another  poem  of  the  same 
period  as  the  *'  Highland  Girl  "  and  ''  Solitary 
Reaper."  The  greeting  of  the  strange  women 
upon  the  solitary  road  was  ''  something 
without  place  or  bound  "  ;  it  seemed  to  give 
him  '*  spiritual  right  to  travel  through  that 
region  bright " ;  and  the  mingling  of  the 
human  voice  and  the  power  of  evening  was 
complete : 

The  echo  of  the  voice  enwrought 
A  human  sweetness  with  the  thought 
Of  travelling  through  the  world  that  lay 
Before  me  in  my  endless  way. 

72 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

It  is,  therefore,  not  surprising  to  find  the  old 
man  who  tells  the  tale  of  *'  Margaret " 
saying : 

The  Poets,  in  their  elegies  and  songs 
Lamenting  the  departed,  call  the  groves, 
They  call  upon  the  hills  and  streams  to  mourn, 
And  senseless  rocks  ;  nor  idly  ;  for  they  speak 
In  these  their  invocations,  with  a  voice 
Obedient  to  the  strong  creative  power 
Of  human  passion.  .  .  . 

It  will  be  remembered  also  that ''  Lucy  Gray  " 
was  written  to  *' exhibit  poetically  entire 
solitude."  Whether  as  the  result  of  this  or 
not,  Lucy  Gray  herself,  though  "  the  sweetest 
thing  that  ever  grew  beside  a  human  door,"  is 
but  a  thin  spirit  upon  the  wind.  The  first 
verse  makes  her  so  much  though  it  calls  her 
a ''  solitary  child  "  ;  the  last  verse  leaves  her  no 
less — though  **  some  maintain  that  to  this  day 
she  is  a  living  child  " — and  it  is  something 
not  more  human  than  a  curlew  that  *'  sings  a 
solitary  song  that  whistles  in  the  wind."  One 
poem,  ''  She  was  a  Phantom  of  Delight," 
describes  another  of  these  ''  lovely  appari- 
tions," a  phantom  *'  sent  to  be  a  moment's 
ornament,"  and  how  he  came  to  know 
her,  ''  a  spirit,  yet  a  woman  too,"  a  perfect 
woman  with  human  virtues, — 

And  yet  a  Spirit  still,  and  bright 
With  something  of  an  angel  light. 

73 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

"  Three  Years  She  Grew "  describes  the 
making  of  such  a  woman.  Nature  makes  her 
in  order  to  have  a  Lady  of  her  own  :  Nature 
is  to  be  her  ''  law  and  impulse  "  ;  the  lines  of 
her  very  beauty  are  to  be  guided  by  Nature, 
taking  the  silence  and  the  calm  of  ''  mute 
insensate  things  "  :  she  and  Nature  are  to  live 
together  and  apparently  alone.  The  lovely 
work  is  done,  but  Lucy  dies — 

She  died  and  left  to  me 

This  heath,  this  calm  and  quiet  scene  .  .  . 

Almost  it  seems  as  if  this  calm  and  quiet 
scene  had  given  birth  to  Lucy  instead  of 
swallowing  her  up. 

In  Wordsworth's  poetry  then  it  frequently 
happens  that  a  woman  is  the  embodied  spirit 
of  a  place,  and  most  angelically  embodied,  too. 
In  degree,  but  not  in  kind,  he  is  unique, 
when  he  thus  combines  the  two  into  one 
spirit  of  power.  They  were  combined  in 
Shakespeare's  mind  when  he  wrote  the 
hundred  and  thirty-second  sonnet,  with  its 
ascent  out  of  two  dark  eyes  and  a  conceit  into 
a  vast  world — 

And  truly  not  the  morning  sun  of  heaven 

Better  becomes  the  grey  cheeks  of  the  east, 

Nor  that  full  star  that  ushers  in  the  even 

Doth  half  that  glory  to  the  sober  west, 

As  those  two  mourning  eyes  become  thy  face  .  .  . 

74 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

It  would  be  absurd  to  call  this  metaphor,  as  if 
it  were  a  separable  decoration,  since  to  employ 
it  so  would  be  a  device  of  shameless  rhetoric 
that  never  could  move  the  heart.  His  love  is 
not  confined  to  one  woman  or  to  her  flesh 
alone,  but  is  an  experience  of  his  whole  nature 
in  which  she,  Mary  Fitton  or  not,  the  dark 
lady,  plays  a  magic  but  an  indefinable  part. 
She  is  the  doorkeeper  of  east  and  west,  and 
has  thrown  open  their  doors  for  the  poet. 
And  conversely,  when  Shakespeare  wishes  to 
put  a  spirit  of  beauty  into  flowers,  as  in 
Perdita's  funeral  speech,  he  must  take  the 
spirit  from  a  woman  for  his  violets  dim. 

But  sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno  s  eyes 
Or  Cytherea's  breath. 

I  cannot  decide  whether  or  no  the  sonnets 
addressed  to  a  man  record  a  passion  for  this 
man,  but  that  they  record  passion  there  can 
be  no  doubt :  I  at  least  can  imagine  nothing 
but  passion  which  could  help  a  man  to  such 
alchemy  of  words  as : 

That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold 
When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold, 
Bare,  ruin'd  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds 

sang. 
In  me  thou  see'st  the  twilight  of  such  day 
As  after  sunset  fadeth  in  the  west. 

75 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

It  is  the  writing  of  a  passionate  heart,  though 
whether  at  that  moment  passionate  towards 
one  human  being  I  do  not  know.    Love  opens 
the  door,  but  it  does  not  know  what  is  within, 
whether  it  be  treasure,  nothingness  or  devils  ; 
and   of  the  unimagined  things  beyond  the 
door   love-poetry   is   the    revelation.      That 
love-poetry  seems  so  often  to  have  little  to  do 
with  love  is  because  we  forget  that  there  are 
matters  in  the  presence  of  which  any  man  and 
Shakespeare  are  equally  impotent  and  silent. 
Many  love-poems  were  never  shown  to  their 
begetters,  many  would  not  have  moved  them 
nor  were  in  a  sense  meant  for  them  at  all. 
The  love-poem  is  not  for  the  beloved,  for  it  is 
not  worthy,  as  it  is  the  least  thing  that  is 
given  to  her,  and  none  knows  this  better  than 
she  unless  it  be  the  lover.     It  is  written  in 
solitude,   is  spent   in  silence  and  the  night 
like  a  sigh  with  an  unknown  object.     It  may 
open  with  desire  of  woman,  but  it  ends  with 
unexpected  consolation  or  with  another  desire 
not  of  woman.     Love-poetry,  like  all  other 
lyric   poetry,    is   in  a  sense  unintentionally 
overheard,  and  only  by  accident  and  in  part 
understood,  since  it  is  written  not  for  any 
one,  far  less  for  the  public,  but  for  the  under- 
standing spirit  that  is  in  the  air  round  about 
or  in  the  sky  or  somewhere. 

It  is  not  only  the  present  or  past  lover  of 

76 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

one  particular  woman  that  can  read  and 
penetrate  and  enjoy  love-poems,  and  this  fact 
alone  might  show  how  vain  it  is  to  regard 
them  as  addressed  merely  to  those  whose 
names  they  may  bear.  When  do  the  words 
of  love-poems  come  into  the  mind  or  on  to 
the  lips  ?  It  is  upon  a  hundred  different 
occasions  having  nothing  in  common  save 
that  beauty  is  there  or  is  desired.  The  sight 
of  a  fine  landscape,  recovery  from  sickness, 
rain  in  spring,  music  of  bird  or  instrument  or 
human  voice,  may  at  any  time  evoke  as  the 
utterance  of  our  hearts  the  words  long  ago 
addressed  to  a  woman  who  never  saw  them, 
and  is  now  dead.  And  as  these  things  revive 
poems  in  the  mind  of  a  reader,  so  certainly 
they  have  given  birth  to  some  of  those  poems 
in  the  minds  of  poets  ;  and  the  figure  of  a 
woman  is  introduced  unwittingly  as  a  symbol 
of  they  know  not  what,  perhaps  only  of 
desire ;  or  if  there  is  no  woman  mentioned, 
it  will  as  often  as  not  bring  one  into  the 
thoughts  and  so  prove,  if  need  were,  that  hers 
was  the  original  incantation.  We  treat  them 
as  parts  written  for  ourselves  to  act,  in  the 
spirit,  as  they  were  written  by  the  poet,  in  the 
spirit.  There  is  much  of  the  poetry  of  Shelley 
^and  of  Spenser,  for  example,  written  since 
they  knew  a  woman,  which  has  no  mention 
of  woman,  and  yet  is  full  of  love  and  fit  to 

77 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

awaken  and  to  satisfy  love.  The  proof  is 
that  the  heart  of  the  youth  when  it  is  most 
loving  fastens  upon  their  words  for  its 
expression.  How  many  times  has  Shelley — 
Shelley  and  the  daffodils  of  Devon  or  the 
wild  thyme  of  Wiltshire — been  the  half  of 
a  first  love  ?  To  how  many  does  his  poetry 
not  seem,  during  a  great  lovely  tract  of  life,  to 
have  been  the  half  of  spring  and  summer  and 
autumn,  of  night  and  dawn  and  noon,  and  of 
youth  enjoying  these  things?  At  the  time 
when  youth  is  most  exultant,  this  poetry  is 
thumbed  night  and  day  ;  a  page  is  opened 
at  random,  as  Virgil  used  to  be,  for  a  word 
big  with  fate ;  and  his  lines  come  to  the  lips, 
seeming  as  suitable  to  light  and  darkness  as 
Cassiopeia's  crown  or  as  the  sun  waking  in 
radiance  and  precious  clouds  on  the  long  hills. 
For  some  Spenser  may  take  the  same  part,  to 
others  Marlowe.  They  find  themselves  upon 
turning  away  from  a  deep  solitary  landscape 
that  has  held  them  by  the  eyes  in  silence  for 
a  long  time,  at  last  repeating,  without  having 
sought  for  it,  Spenser's 

So  passeth,  in  the  passing  of  a  day, 

Of  mortal  life  the  leaf,  the  bud,  the  flower, 

Ne  more  doth  flourish  after  fast  decay, 

That  erst  was  sought  to  deck  both  bed  and 

bower, 
Of  many  a  Lady  and  many  a  Paramour : 

78 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

Gather  therefore  the  Rose,  whilst  yet  is  prime, 
For  soon  comes  age,  that  will  her  pride  deflower : 
Gather  the  Rose  of  love,  whilst  yet  is  time, 
Whilst  loving  thou  mayst  loved  be  with  equal  crime. 

or  it  may  be  : 

Amorous  Leander,  beautiful  and  young  .  .  . 

Conversely,  and  perversely  too,  with  love  in 
the  heart  they  will  utter  with  religious 
solemnity  the  **  O  wild  west  wind  "  or  ''  Thou 
hast  a  voice,  great  mountain,  to  repeal  large 
codes  of  fraud  and  woe." 

Byron,  wishing  to  explain  this  tide  of  love 
that  can  bear  upon  its  full  spread  so  many 
other  ships  than  the  one  where  the  beloved 
is  sitting,  says  of  Rousseau's  love : 

But  his  was  not  the  love  of  living  dame, 
Nor  of  the  dead  who  rise  upon  our  dreams, 
But  of  ideal  beauty,  which  became 
In  him  existence,  and  overflowing  teems 
Along  his  burning  page,  distemper'd  though  it 
seems. 

T/izs  breathed  itself  to  life  in  Julie,  ^Ms 
Invested  her  with  all  that's  wild  and  sweet ; 
This  hallow'd,  too,  the  memorable  kiss 
Which  every  morn  his  fever'd  lip  would  greet, 
From  hers,  who  but  with  friendship  his  would  meet ; 
But  to  that  gentle  touch,  through  brain  and  breast 
Flash'd  the  thrilled  spirit  s  love-devouring  heat ; 
In  that  absorbing  sigh  perchance  more  blest 
Than  vulgar  minds  may  be  with  all  they  seek  possest. 

79 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Love,  Nature  and  Liberty  are  three,  but  indi- 
visible on  the  pages  of  many  poets,  of  young 
poets  who  sit  like  Lamartine  upon  an  island 
like  a  poet's  dream  in  a  fair  sea,  and  foster 
the  double  dream  of  those  who  are  worthy  to 
dream  great  things  :  Love  and  Liberty.  To 
that  island  they  have  gone  to  look  upon  sky 
and  sea,  to  let  the  spirit  evaporate  in  the  sun, 
to  feel  and  to  record  the  ferment  of  youth- 
ful impressions,  sentiments,  and  ideas  which 
some  day  will  make  poetry.  So  the  young 
poet  explains  himself  to  the  island  girl  who 
wants  to  know  why  he  has  left  his  home  and 
his  family ;  and  the  sweet-voiced,  dark-haired 
girl,  Graziella,  laughs  at  him  merrily,  and 
when  he  is  too  long  at  his  book  she  steals  up 
behind  him  and  suddenly  grasps  book  or  pen 
and  runs  off  with  it,  only  replying  when 
caught  with  the  question,  Is  it  not  pleasanter 
to  talk  to  me  than  to  read  ? 

Perhaps  the  most  unanswerable  testimony 
of  all  is  to  be  found  in  the  poetry  which 
John  Clare  wrote  during  his  twenty  years' 
imprisonment  in  a  madhouse.  He  had 
already  in  earlier  days  called  his  Muse  a  wild 
enchantress,  and  had  wooed  her  on  a  bed  of 
thyme,  and  had  seen  solitude  as  a  woman 
with  wild  ringlets  lying  unbound  over  her 
lily  shoulders.  He  had  already  written  a 
poem  on  the  '*  Death  of  Beauty  " — 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

Now  thou  art  gone,  the  fairy  rose  is  fled, 
That  erst  gay  Fancy's  garden  did  adorn. 
Thine  was  the  dew  on  which  her  folly  fed, 
The  sun  by  which  she  glittered  in  the  morn.  .  .  . 

But  he  was  to  get  far  beyond  this  state- 
ment that  with  the  death  of  the  woman  died 
Nature's  beauty.  These  latest  and  finest 
poems  leave  personifications  far  behind. 
His  native  trees  and  fields,  and  the  women 
he  loved  after  they  had  died  or  vanished, 
haunted  him  in  his  prison.  His  mind 
seemed  to  shed  all  its  mere  intelligence  and 
all  its  conventionality  in  the  use  of  words. 
He  was  left  free  as  a  spirit  in  his  ghastly 
solitude.  Then  to  him  his  Mary  became  a 
part  of  the  spring,  a  part  inexplicably  absent. 
He  had  talked  to  the  flowers  when  a  child, 
and  when  a  man  they  had  **toId  the  names 
of  early  love  "  :  now  that  he  was  alone,  they 
decked  '*the  bier  of  spring."  But  if  one  of 
the  Marys  came  into  his  mind  it  was  in  as 
complete  a  harmony  with  Nature  as  one  of 
Wordsworth's  women,  yet  with  little  or 
nothing  of  his  thin  spiritual  quality.  The 
woman  of  *'  The  Invitation  "    is  real : 

Come  with  thy  maiden  eye,  lay  silks  and  satins  by ; 

Come  in  thy  russet  or  grey  cotton  gown  ; 

Come  to  the  meads,  dear,  where  flags,  sedge,  and 

reeds  appear. 
Rustling  to  soft  winds  and  bowing  low  down. 

F  8l 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

If  she  is  a  spirit,  she  is  a  spirit  of  the 
English  earth,  not  of  the  transparent  air. 
Another  **  Lover's  Invitation "  shows  the 
same  union  of  woman  and  earth  and  sky. 
So  too  such  poems  as  *'  Evening  '*  with  its — 

I  walk  with  my  true  love  adown  the  green  vale, 
The  light  feathered  grasses  keep  tapping  her  shoe. 

In  **  The  Morning  Walk  "  the  country  maid 
climbing  the  stile  in  the  early  summer 
morning  is  as  much  a  flower  as  the  rose  that 
she  crops — 

She  cropt  a  flower,  shook  off  the  dew. 
And  on  her  breast  the  wild  rose  grew ; 
She  blushed  as  fair,  as  lovely,  too, 
The  living  rose  of  morning. 

He  has  a  poem  to  the  **  Maid  of  the  Wilder- 
ness/' a  nymph  of  place  made  of  firm  flesh. 
When  primrose  and  celandine  come  in  March, 
he  says,  *'  The  sun  shines  about  me  so  sweet, 
I  cannot  help  thinking  of  love."  In  a  poem 
on  Evening  that  begins  with  a  verse  of 
description,  he  says : 

The  evening  comes  in  with  the  wishes  of  love 

and 

For  Nature  is  love,  and  finds  haunts  for  true  love. 
Where  nothing  can  hear  or  intrude  ; 

It  hides  from  the  eagle  and  joins  with  the  dove. 
In  beautiful  green  solitude. 

82 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

He  breaks  out  into  a  wild  cry  for  a  ''bonny 
lassie  O  !  "  and  it  might  be  thought,  so  full 
of  natural  things  is  the  poem,  that  she  was 
a  flower  maid  like  the  Welsh  Blodeuwedd 
whom  Math  framed  out  of  blossoms,  but  she 
is  an  English  country  girl  notwithstanding 
and  he  wants  her 

In  a  grassy  nook  hard  by,  with  a  little 

patch  of  sky 
And  a  bush  to  keep  us  dry. 
Bonny  lassie  O ! 

The  gipsy  lass  in  the  smoky  camp  among 
the  scented  woodbine  is  a  fellow  to  her. 
Perhaps  the  maddest  and  most  perfect  of  the 
asylum  poems,  ''  Love  lives  beyond  the 
tomb,"  is  remarkable  for  nothing  so  much 
as  for  its  eloquent  but  inexplicable  expression 
of  this  harmony  of  nature  and  love.  It  must 
therefore  be  quoted  in  full : 

Love  lives  beyond  the  tomb, 
And  earth  which  fades  like  dew ! 

I  love  the  fond, 
The  faithful  and  the  true. 

Love  lives  in  sleep : 
Tis  happiness  of  heahhy  dreams: 

Eve's  dews  may  weep, 
But  love  delightful  seems. 

'Tis  seen  in  flowers, 
And  in  the  morning's  pearly  dew ; 

In  earth's  green  hours, 
And  in  the  heaven's  eternal  blue. 

83 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

'Tis  heard  in  spring, 
When  light  and  sunbeams,  warm  and  kind, 

On  angel's  wing 
Bring  love  and  music  to  the  mind. 

And  where's  the  voice, 
So  young,  so  beautiful,  and  sweet 

As  Nature's  choice. 
Where  spring  and  lovers  meet  ? 

Love  lives  beyond  the  tomb. 
And  earth,  which  fades  like  dew ! 

I  love  the  fond. 
The  faithful  and  the  true. 

This  and  perhaps  all  of  his  best  poems 
show  Clare  as  one  of  those  who  have  in  them 
the  natural  spirit  of  poetry  in  its  purity,  so 
pure  that  perhaps  he  can  never  express  it 
quite  whole  and  perfect.  They  are  songs  of 
innocence,  praising  a  world  not  realised,  or,  it 
is  more  reasonable  to  say,  a  world  which  most 
old  and  oldish  people  agree  to  regard  as  some- 
thing different.  For  such  a  writer  the  usual 
obstacles  and  limits  are  temporary  or  do  not 
exist  at  all,  and  as  with  children  the  dividing 
line  between  the  real  and  the  unreal,  either 
shifts  or  has  not  yet  been  made.  No  man  or 
woman  is  a  poet  who  does  not  frequently,  to 
the  end  of  life,  ignore  these  obstacles  and 
limits,  which  are  not  just  and  absolute  but 
represent  the  golden  mean  or  average,  and 
have   less    reality   than   the   equator.     Few, 

84 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

except  idiots,  can  escape  them  altogether, 
since  they  are  produced  by  weariness  and 
compromise,  which  are  produced  by  time 
and  without  effort.  Some  great  men  escape 
while  seeming  to  accept  them,  but  there 
is  hardly  a  pleasure  in  the  world  equal  to 
that  of  seeing  one  who  is  not  a  child  and 
has  yet  escaped  them  so  happily  as  Clare. 
He  reminds  us  that  words  are  alive,  and  not 
only  alive  but  still  half-wild  and  imperfectly 
domesticated.  They  are  quiet  and  gentle  in 
their  ways,  but  are  like  cats — to  whom  night 
overthrows  our  civilisation  and  servitude — 
who  seem  to  love  us  but  will  starve  in  the 
house  which  we  have  left,  and  thought  to  have 
emptied  of  all  worth.  Words  never  consent 
to  correspond  exactly  to  any  object  unless, 
like  scientific  terms,  they  are  first  killed. 
Hence  the  curious  life  of  words  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  love  all  life  so  well  that  they  do 
not  kill  even  the  slender  words  but  let  them 
play  on  ;  and  such  are  poets.  The  magic  of 
words  is  due  to  their  living  freely  among 
things,  and  no  man  knows  how  they  came 
together  in  just  that  order  when  a  beautiful 
thing  is  made  like  **  Full  fathom  five."  And  so 
it  is  that  children  often  make  phrases  that  are 
poetry,  though  they  still  more  often  produce 
it  in  their  acts  and  half-suggested  thoughts ; 
and   that  grown  men  with  dictionaries    are 

85 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

as  murderous  of  words  as  entomologists  of 
butterflies. 

Here,  I  think,  in  '*  Love  lives  beyond  the 
tomb,"  in  this  unprejudiced  singing  voice 
that  knows  not  what  it  sings,  is  some  reason 
for  us  to  believe  that  poets  are  not  merely 
writing  figuratively  when  they  say,  ''  My 
love  is  like  a  red,  red  rose,"  that  they  are  to 
be  taken  more  literally  than  they  commonly 
are,  that  they  do  not  invent  or  *'  make  things 
up"  as  grown  people  do  when  they  con- 
descend to  a  child's  game.  What  they  say 
is  not  chosen  to  represent  what  they  feel  or 
think,  but  is  itself  the  very  substance  of  what 
had  before  lain  dark  and  unapparent,  is  itself 
all  that  survives  of  feeling  and  thought, 
and  cannot  be  expanded  or  reduced  without 
dulling  or  falsification.  If  this  is  not  so, 
and  if  we  do  not  believe  it  to  be  so,  then 
poetry  is  of  no  greater  importance  than  wall- 
paper, or  a  wayside  drink  to  one  who  is  not 
thirsty.  But  if  it  is  so,  then  we  are  on  the 
way  to  understand  why  poetry  is  mighty  ;  for 
if  what  poets  say  is  true  and  not  feigning, 
then  of  how  little  account  are  our  ordinary 
assumptions,  our  feigned  interests,  our  play- 
ful and  our  serious  pastimes  spread  out 
between  birth  and  death.  Poetry  is  and 
must  always  be  apparently  revolutionary  if 
active,  anarchic  if  passive.  It  is  the  utter- 
86 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

ance  of  the  human  spirit  when  it  is  in  touch 
with  a  world  to  which  the  affairs  of  **this 
world "  are  parochial.  Hence  the  strange- 
ness and  thrill  and  painful  delight  of  poetry 
at  all  times,  and  the  deep  response  to  it  of 
youth  and  of  love ;  and  because  love  is  wild, 
strange,  and  full  of  astonishment,  is  one 
reason  why  poetry  deals  so  much  in  love, 
and  why  all  poetry  is  in  a  sense  love- 
poetry. 

Mad  Clare  reminds  us  of  those  mad  maids, 
and  their  songs  that  are  so  characteristic  of 
English  poetry,  if  indeed  they  are  not,  as 
Mrs.  Meynell  thinks,  a  peculiarly  English 
fancy.  Such  are  Ophelia,  Wordsworth's 
Ruth,  and  Herrick's  Mad  Maid.  Clare 
himself  only  once  mentions  the  mad  maid, 
when  he  bids  the  man  who  persists  in 
valuing  the  vanities  of  life, 

Plait  straws  with  Bedlam  Bess 
And  call  them  diamond  rings. 

He  himself  sings  like  one  of  them  in  places, 
especially  in  the  ''Adieu,"  where  he  says 
good-bye  to  his  love  before  going  to  sea : 

I  left  the  little  birds 
And  sweet  lowing  of  the  herds, 
And  couldn't  find  out  words, 
Do  you  see, 

87 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

To  say  to  them  good-bye, 
Where  the  yellow  cups  do  lie  ; 
So  heaving  a  deep  sigh, 
Took  to  sea. 

These  maids  concern  us  here  only  because 
they  are  always  love-lorn  and  always  flower- 
lovers  wandering  in  the  free  air.  In 
Herrick's  poem  she  bids  good-morrow  equally 
to  the  primrose  and  to  the  maids  who  are 
to  strew  her  love's  tomb  with  flowers.  She 
herself,  with  torn  hair  dew-bedabbled,  is  like 
a  flower  a  little  wildly  fondled  by  the  wind, 
and  she  calls  for  our  pity  only  as  much  as  a 
flower  does.  She  seems  a  wave-cold  creature 
who  has  had  absolution  from  much  of  her 
humanity.  She  is  like  Ophelia  who  is  not 
sorry  any  more  with  the  flowers  in  her  hand, 
'*  incapable,"  as  the  Queen  says  '*  of  her  own 
distress," 

Or  like  a  creature  native  and  indu'd 
Unto  that  element. 

Crazed  Kate  of  '*The  Task"  is  another:  but 
she  never  smiles  in  her  wanderings  over  what 
seemed  to  Cowper  the  dreary  waste,  begging 
for  a  pin,  never  for  food  or  clothes.  Words- 
worth's Ruth,  when  not  seven  years  old,  went 
wandering  *'in  thoughtless  freedom  bold,"  and 

Had  built  a  bower  upon  the  green, 
As  if  she  from  her  birth  had  been 
An  infant  of  the  woods. 

88 


Women,  Nature  and  Poetry 

So  when  the  grown  woman  was  deserted  by 
her  husband  and  she  went  mad,  even  in  her 
prison  cell  she  **nor  wanted  sun,  nor  rain, 
nor  dew  "  ;  when  she  fled  it  was  in  the  fields 
that  she  ^'breathed  again";  therewith  her  flute 
of  hemlock  stalk  she  had  ''  less  of  mind,  than 
body's  wretchedness " ;  and  she  returned  to 
the  play  of  her  infancy.  I  cannot  now  omit 
to  mention  the  last  and  not  the  least  beautiful 
use  of  the  mad  flower-loving  maid  in  poetry  : 

Let  me  be  free  to  wear  my  dreams, 

Like  weeds  in  some  mad  maiden's  hair 
When  she  doth  think  the  world  has  not 

Another  maid  so  rich  and  fair  ; 
And  proudly  smiles  on  rich  and  poor, 

The  queen  of  all  fair  women  then : 
So  I,  dressed  in  my  idle  dreams, 

Will  think  myself  the  king  of  men. 

The  poet  is  William  H.  Davies  and  the  verse 
is  from  his  *'  Farewell  to  Poesy,"  which  was 
published  only  this  year.  s 

To  return.  It  seems  that  the  love  of 
women  being  a  feeling  that  is  radical,  it,  and 
the  memory  or  the  hope  or  the  possibility 
of  it,  stir  men  in  just  that  instinctive  manner 
which  makes  poetry,  or  at  least  gathers 
a  store  of  the  material  for  poetry.  The 
evidence  of  the  poets  themselves  appears 
to  justify  us  in  accepting  Coleridge's  words  : 
**  Suppose  a  wide   and  delightful    landscape 

89 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

and  what  the  eye  is  to  the  light  and  the 
light  to  the  eye,  that  interchangeably  is  the 
lover  to  the  beloved."  Which  leads  him  on 
to  this  address  from  a  lover  to  his  beloved  : 
**  Light  of  mine  eye  !  by  which  alone  I  not 
only  see  all  I  see,  but  which  makes  up  more 
than  half  the  loveliness  of  the  objects  seen, 
yet,  still,  like  the  rising  sun  in  the  morning, 
like  the  moon  at  night,  remainest  thyself  and 
for  thyself,  the  dearest,  fairest  form  of  all  the 
thousand  forms  that  derive  from  thee  all 
their  visibility,  and  borrow  from  thy  presence 
their  chiefest  beauty."  The  claim  that  women 
have  influenced  poetry  by  their  profound  and 
mysterious  association  with  Nature,  could  not 
have  an  expression  more  clear  or  more 
authoritative. 


90 


chapter  Five:  Passion  and  Poetry 

IN  the  last  chapter  women  were  regarded 
as  influencing  poetry  in  their  guise  of 
minor  rustic  deities  or  nymphs  of  wood 
and  water  and  mountain,  a  guise  due  in  part 
to  their  nature  and  their  traditional  connec- 
tions, and  in  part  to  their  lovers  and  love 
itself.  But  this,  though  perhaps  often  a 
strong  undetected  form  of  their  power,  is  not 
a  chief  one  to  more  than  one  or  two  pofit^. 
Their  chief  influence  in  love  has  been  exerteoV  ^ 
by  the  stimulation  of  desire — desire  to  possess 
not  only  them  but  other  known  and  unknown 
things  deemed  necessary  to  that  perfection  of 
beauty  and  happiness  which  love  proposes. 
It  is  a  desire  of  impossible  things  which  the 
poet  alternately  assuages  and  rouses  again  by 
poetry.  He  may  attempt  to  sate  it  by  violence 
in  pleasure,  in  action,  in  wandering ;  but 
though  he  can  make  it  impotent  he  cannot 
sate  it :  or  he  may  turn  his  attempt  inward 
upon  himself.  In  either  case  he  comes  late 
or  soon  to  poetry.  There  may  seem  to  be 
infidelity  in  the  act  of  writing,  with  its  inevit- 
able detachment  from  the  very  object  of 
praise  or  complaint.  If  there  were  no  night, 
no  need  of  rest  or  food,  no  limit  to  the 
strength  of  the  body  or  the  vigour  of  the 
spirit,    no    obstacles    of    distance,    custom, 

91 


Feminine  Influence   on  the  Poets 

necessity  and  chance,  not  to   speak   of  the 

woman's  possible  inability  to  love  in  return, 

it  would  be  reasonable  to  speak  of  infidelity. 

^There  could  be  no  love-poetry  in  Paradise. 

/It  is  made  by  unsatisfied  desire,  and  that  is 

'^^  made  by  our  mortality  and  the  conditions  of 

life,  which  are  essentially  unalterable. 

Nevertheless,  the  accusation  survives. 
Poets  frequently  say  that  if  only  they  loved 
less  they  could  write  better ;  the  fact  being 
that  they  are  under  a  compulsion  so  mighty 
that  writing  is  not  a  pleasing  self-conscious 
exercise  but  a  duty  of  whose  performance 
7^  they  cannot  judgej  Landor  is  not  alone  in 
ridiculing  the  'Hrttle  dainty  poet  '*  who  writes 
so  gracefully  because  he  is  undisturbed,  and 
in  saying — 

That  slender  twigs  send  forth  the  fiercest  flame, 
Not  without  noise,  but  ashes  soon  succeed, 
While  the  broad  chump  leans  back  against  the 

stones. 
Strong  with  internal  fire,  sedately  breathed, 
And  heats  the  chamber  round  from  morn  till 

night. 

Landor  is,  however,  no  overwhelming  autho- 
rity, and  he  probably  wants  us  to  believe  that 
he  is  the  honest  ** broad  chump" — in  vain. 
Browning's  **One  word  more " '^is  another 
apparent  slight  upon  love-poetry.  Browning 
is  one  of  the  few  poets  to  make  poetry  out  of 
92 


Passion  and  Poetry 

a  matured  passion  that  has  passed  through 
the  fulfilment  of  marriage,  and  **  One  word 
more  "  is  most  likely  the  proof  that  he  found 
it  difficult.  Beside  the  clear  seen,  grave,  and 
manifold  bliss  of  union  it  is  natural  that 
words  should  seem  light ;  that  there  should 
be  any  need  of  so  unfair  a  comparison  is  sur- 
prising. Browning  implies  that  its  public 
capacity  desecrates  his  art  when  he  wishes  to 
write  something  actually  for  the  eye  of  his 
beloved.  He  is  only  upbraiding  words  for 
not  being  deeds,  and  he  proceeds  with  great 
ingenuousness — in  a  poem  printed  in  a  book 
like  any  other — 

God  be  thanked,  the  meanest  of  His  creatures 
Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with, 
One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her, 

and  to  say  that  she  also  has  two  sides,  and 
one  of  them  is  known  to  him  alone.  The 
whole  poem  is  in  effect  a  revelation  of  the 
poet  in  search  of  a  new  compliment,  and  in 
the  end  it  is  the  search  itself  that  is  the 
compliment. 

Few  love-poems  take  us  into  the  world  of 
social  life  as  '*  One  word  more  "  does,  instead 
of  into  the  solitude  characteristic  of  the 
detachment  of  composition,  where  the  mis- 
tress is  ''  Lady  of  the  solitude."  Shakespeare's 
sonnets,  from  ''  In  the  old  age  black  was  not 

93 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

counted  fair  "  onwards,  appear  to  be  most  of 
them  far  more  than  usual  directly  related  to 
facts  of  present  or  very  recent  experience. 
"  In  the  old  age ''  itself  is  not  one  of  these, 
and  there  are  others  such  as  **  My  mistresses 
eyes  are  nothing  like  the  sun,"  where  some 
of  the  lines  are  too  much  like  the  hundred 
thousand  other  Elizabethan  sonnets  to  have 
an  individual  effect.  But  in  the  main  so 
immediately  connected  with  life  are  they  that 
they  are  not  wholly  intelligible  without  a  key, 
and  not  even  yet  are  we  quite  sure  that  the 
right  key  is  in  our  hands,  though  Mr.  Frank 
Harrises  brilliant  book,  *'  The  Man  Shake- 
speare," makes  us  fairly  confident  that  it  is. 
Some,  like  *'  My  love  is  as  a  fever,"  are  of  the 
kind  that  make  us  wonder  what  was  the 
impulse  to  put  down  upon  paper  for  the 
brute  strange  world  things  so  new,  terrible, 
and  dark  ;  it  is  simple  truth,  depicting  one 
man's  feeling  at  one  moment,  and  no  more. 
'*  O  call  not  me  to  justify  the  wrong  "  has  the 
pathos  of  a  helpless  simplicity  in  its  ''  Dear 
heart,  forbear  "  and  '*  her  pretty  looks."  The 
lack  of  anything  that  might  even  seem  to  be 
decoration  gives  the  series  to  the  Dark  Lady 
an  extreme  power,  exchanging  for  Shake- 
speare's customary  sensuousness  of  language 
the  undraped  sensuousness  and  still  greater 
sensuality  of  the  man  himself.  Seeing  how 
94 


Passion  and  Poetry 

seldom  poetry  has  mastered  this  directness  it 
is  a  wonder  that  some  have  not  refused  to 
call  these  poems  at  all.  They  are,  as  Shelley 
said,  and  they  are  that  continually,  '*  a  whet- 
stone for  the  dull  intelligence."  They  do 
not,  or  hardly  at  all,  make  any  appeal  to  the 
indolent  love  of  poetry.  For  mere  happy 
delight,  such  as  the  earlier  sonnets  often  give, 
a  man  would  as  soon  read  Blake's  Prophetic 
Books  or  Cowper's  Olney  Hymns.  They 
refer  to  a  passion  for  the  one  particular 
woman  who  inspired  them,  and  there  is  no 
general  interest  in  them.  They  ought  to 
attract  men  who  do  not  read  poetry,  except 
that  the  elliptical  character  of  poetry,  regard- 
less of  the  average  man  and  the  public,  is  here 
in  its  perfection.  The  poet  could  have  said 
of  them  more  accurately  than  of  those  to 
Mr.  W.  H.  :  ''  Reserve  them  for  my  love,  not 
for  their  rhyme."  The  love  obliterates  the 
rhyme.  There  is  nothing  else.  Shakespeare 
had  no  need  to  ask  for  a  new  language,  as 
Browning  asked,  but  was  *'  using  Nature, 
that's  an  art  to  others."  The  poems  worthy 
to  stand  with  them  as  the  expression  of  love, 
not  heavenly  love,  but  love  body  and  soul, 
can  be  counted,  when  they  are  found,  on  the 
fingers  of  the  two  hands. 

It  is  quite  certain  that  many  of  the  Eliza- 
bethans loved  in  a  manner  as  littk  virtuous 

95 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

as  Shakespeare's ;  but  perhaps  they  had  not 
his  abandonment  or  lack  of  shame ;  at  any 
rate  their  expression  followed  their  experience 
afar  off.  The  fact  that  their  sonnets  have  the 
appearance  of  having  been  written  in  cool 
ease  is  in  no  wise  an  argument  against  the 
depth  of  their  affections :  it  merely  proves 
them  poor  writers,  men  with  an  impassable 
door  between  their  poetry  and  their  individual 
life,  men  who  could  not  be  sincere  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world  except  when  compelled 
in  a  state  of  excitement  to  utter  plain  prose. 
Such  a  one  calls  his  lines  *'  unpolished,  rude 
and  base,"  *'  unworthy  to  blazon  beauty's 
glory"  ;  but  bids  them  to  go  to  her  and  if  she 
laugh  at  them  tell  her  to  look  within  his  heart 
for  the  truth.  Another,  in  spite  of  their 
**  levity,"  puts  forth  his  scores  of  sonnets  and 
madrigals  in  accordance  with  his  friend's  im- 
portunity. He  commands  them  to  '*  pack 
hence  '*  and  to  deny  their  origin  and  aim  to 
any  questioner.  What  he  calls  '*  levity  "  may 
be  imagined  from  his  tone : 

I  never  will  from  labour  wits  release  I 
My  senses  never  shall  in  quiet  rest ; 
Till  thou  be  pitiful  and  love  alike  ! 

Yet  to  such  a  man  a  refusal  or  the  expectation  of 
an  unwanted  child  may  have  meant  a  sleepless 
or,  at  any  rate,  a  drunken  night.     But  he  did 

96 


Ca^ty  c^ca>ne^,  ^^Tt&n^&kf  o^ ^s^?9z.M6?^^ 


( iJyt'Cfyi'iy ^^ittiy  ^yM^^ieu^ 


\y^A.aA^J 


Passion  and  Poetry 

not  send  his  sonnets  to  that  quarter  unless  he 
thought  to  convince  a  mere  woman — a  proud 
one   or  else  a  slattern  weeping — that  these 
words  did  credit  to  anything  but  his  Univer- 
sity.    The  elder  Giles  Fletcher  says  right  out 
in  his  address  to  the  reader,  that  he  wrote  his 
sonnets  to  try  his  humour:  *'Andfor  the  matter 
of  Love,  it  may  be  I  am  so  devoted  to  some 
one  into  whose   hands   these  may  light  by 
chance,  that  she  may  say,  which  thou  now 
sayest,  *  That  surely  he  is  in  love ' :  which  if 
she  do,  then  have  I  the  full  recompense  of 
my  labour."     Which  would  be  an  acceptable 
look  of  recognition  to  a  pretty  unknown  if 
she  had  had  more  credible  pledges  in  secret ; 
especially  as  their  author  had  been  an  ambas- 
sador and  a  Member  of  Parliament.     It  may 
have  been  for  her  to  laugh  at  that  he  replied 
to  the  question  *'What  my  Licia  is?  "with 
the    suggestions — she    may    be    Learning's 
image,  or  some  other  personification,  or  the 
patroness  of  the  poems,  or  a  college;  or  *'it 
may  be  conceit  and  pretend  nothing."     Most 
of  these  thousands  of  sonnets  awake  no  curio- 
sity as   to  ''the  facts  of  the  case,"  though 
a  man  would  give  much  to  have  a  complete 
intimate    account   of   the   private    life   of  a 
sonneteer    during    the    period    of    concep- 
tion and  composition.     This  account  might 
be   printed   on   one    side   of    the  page  and 

G  97 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

the  sonnets  on  the  other,  like  original  and 
translation. 

The  sonnet  had  become,  in  fact,  so  powerful 
a  thing  of  itself  that  the  chances  were  against 
a  man  who  set  out  to  use  it  as  a  medium  of 
**  emotion  remembered  in  tranquillity."  He 
might  as  well  hope  to  be  the  saviour  of  man- 
kind in  a  well-ironed  silk  hat.  Take  the  case 
of  Thomas  Lodge.  When  he  was  thirty  he 
went  upon  a  voyage  to  the  Canaries,  and 
during  the  voyage  wrote  his  **  Rosalynde : 
Euphues'  Golden  Legacie."  This  romance 
contains  one  of  the  loveliest  of  English 
artificial  lyrics,  that  beginning : 

Love  in  my  bosom,  like  a  bee, 

Doth  suck  his  sweet : 
Now  with  his  wings  he  plays  with  me, 

Now  with  his  feet. 
Within  mine  eyes  he  makes  his  nest. 
His  bed  amid  my  tender  breast  ; 
My  kisses  are  his  daily  feast, 
And  yet  he  robs  me  of  my  rest : 
Ah  !  wanton,  will  ye  ? 

Lodge  thought  every  line  of  *'  Rosalynde " 
wet  with  the  surge,  but  who  will  point  to  the 
influence  of  the  Straits  of  Magellan  upon 
these  four  verses?  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  disguisings  and  Arcadianism 
of  the  romance  have  anything  to  do  with 
Lodge's  own  life,  but  the  prose  and  verse  are 

98 


Passion  and  Poetry 

a  lover  s,  and  '*  Love  in  my  bosom,  like  a  bee  '* 
is  with  all  the  sophistication  of  its  origin  and 
method  a  love-poem  as  fresh  as  anything  in 
Burns.  It  is  full  of  the  beauty  and  gaiety 
and  desire  of  youth.  Conventional  and  arti- 
ficial as  are  the  assumptions  in  it  Lodge  has 
absorbed  them,  they  are  second  nature, 
and  to  the  reader  who  has  equally  absorbed 
them,  the  song  has  the  matin  clearness  and 
sweetness.  Its  world  is  delicate  fadeless 
Arcady,  be  it  remembered,  and  not  England, 
but  for  some  men  that  are  twenty  centuries 
old  this  Arcady  is  as  homelike  as  England. 
Three  years  after  **  Rosalynde  "  was  out  came 
Lodge's  ''Phillis  honoured  with  Pastorall 
Sonnets,  Elegies,  and  Amorous  Delights." 
The  best  thing  in  the  collection  is  the  verse 
upon  the  title-page : 

Jam  Phoebus  disjungit  equos,  jam  Cinthia  jungit, 

which  being  debased  into  English  prose  is, 
'*  Now  Phoebus  unharnesseth  his  steeds  and 
Cinthia  harnesseth  hers."  We  do  not  know 
anything  about  Phillis.  If  she  understood 
the  poems,  she  would  probably  promise  him 
a  kiss  if  he  would  forbear  writing  any  more 
sonnets.  If  she  did  not  understand  them, 
she  would  think  him  a  good  scholar  and  much 
above  her.  He  never  gets  near  to  beauty  or 
to  any  kind  of  reality  in  this  style : 

99 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

I  would  in  rich  and  golden-coloured  rain, 
With  tempting  showers  in  pleasant  sort  descend 
Into  fair  Phillis'  lap,  my  lovely  friend, 
When  sleep  her  sense  with  slumber  doth  restrain. 
I  would  be  changed  to  a  milk-white  bull.   .  ,  . 

This  is  a  common  misfortune  of  Elizabethan 
poets,  to  write  well  when  they  are  writing  a 
lyric  dramatically  or  at  least  not  professedly 
in  their  own  persons,  and  to  write  ill  when 
they  are  addressing  some  Licia,  Diana,  Phillis, 
Delia,  Idea,  Fidessa,  Laura,  Parthenophe  or 
another.  It  befell  Michael  Drayton  in  his 
sonnets  to  ''  Idea."  Mr.  Oliver  Elton  has 
proved  that  Idea  (at  least  in  1593)  was  Anne 
Goodere,  who  married  Sir  Henry  Rainsford 
in  1595  or  1596.  It  was  in  the  Gooderes' 
house  in  Warwickshire  that  Drayton  had 
been  reared,  and  Anne  is  known  to  have  been 
a  beautiful  woman.  Probably  Drayton  saw 
her  often  at  her  husband's  house,  and  the 
poems  addressed  to  her  cover  a  period  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  It  is  not  known  that 
Drayton  was  ever  married,  but  it  is  also  not 
probable  that  his  devotion  to  Anne  Rainsford 
was  of  a  kind  to  trouble  Sir  Henry.  With 
the  help  of  the  sonnets  and  the  dedications  of 
Drayton's  books  this  outline  can  be  filled  out 
somewhat,  and  in  more  than  one  way.  The 
majority  of  the  sonnets,  it  must  be  admitted, 
seem  to  bear  a  direct  relation  to  important 
100 


Passion  and  Poetry  .,^. ;;,;.;: 

states  of  mind.  '^There's  nothing  grieves 
me,  but  that  Age  should  haste,"  for  example, 
where  he  wishes  he  could  live  long  enough  to 
see  his  scornful  lady  old  and  so  ready  enough 
to  be  delighted  with  praises  at  last, — that 
sonnet  is  a  definite  and  forcible  piece  of 
spleen.  But  for  the  most  part  the  sonnets 
are  more  difficult  to  piece  together  than 
Shakespeare's,  and  neither  their  intensity  nor 
Drayton's  repute  is  enough  to  oblige  us  to 
take  the  necessary  pains.  Once,  in  *'  Since 
there's  no  help,  come,  let  us  kiss  and  part," 
a  sonnet  first  printed  at  the  end  of  the  twenty- 
five  years  and  so,  perhaps,  corresponding  to 
a  final  farewell,  Drayton  rose  to  great  poetry 
in  addressing  his  *'  Idea."  Yet  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  any  one  has  justified  the 
hope  he  had,  in  the  ''  Hymn  to  his  Lady's 
Birthplace,"  that  the  old  man  passing  by  the 
door  in  Coventry  shall  say  to  his  son : 

There  was  that  Lady  born,  which  long 
To  after-ages  shall  be  sung  ; 
Who  unawares  being  passed  by, 
Back  to  that  house  shall  cast  his  eye, 
Speaking  my  verses  as  he  goes, 
And  with  a  sigh  shut  every  close. 

The  failure  of  Drayton's  verses  directly  in- 
spired by  his  mistress  and  actually  addressed 
to  her,  may  perhaps  be  put  down  to  the  too 
great  deliberation  of  his  attitude.     He  was 

lOI 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

setting  out  to  do  what  Shakespeare  and  very 
few  others  have  done,  to  make  poetry  straight 
out  of  experience,  not  merely  upon  an  impulse 
due  to  experience.  This  seems  almost  to  for- 
bid that  unconscious  ripening  of  the  idea  which 
Keats  knew  and  wished  always  and  exclusively 
to  obey.  This  process  probably  accounts  for 
the  superiority  of  Drayton's  poems  which 
either  profess  to  express  another's  love  or  deal 
artificially  with  his  own.  Gorbo's  three  verses 
in  the  ninth  eclogue  of  the  ''Shepherd's 
Garland  "  are  an  example  : 

Through  yonder  vale  as  I  did  pass, 
Descending  from  the  hill, 
I  met  a  smirking  bonny  lass, 
They  call  her  Daffodil : 

Whose  presence  as  along  she  went, 

The  pretty  flowers  did  greet. 

As  though  their  heads  they  downward  bent, 

With  homage  to  her  feet. 

And  all  the  shepherds  that  were  nigh, 
From  top  of  every  hill. 
Unto  the  valleys  low  did  crie. 
There  goes  sweet  Daffodil. 

Here  the  grace  of  beauty  blinds  us  to  the 
unreality  of  the  pastoral  convention,  and 
though  we  might  be  at  a  loss  to  say  what 
Daffodil  was  like,  and  what  her  attire  and 
way  of   walking  and  of   speaking,  yet  she 

I02 


Passion  and  Poetry 

indubitably  lives,  blithe,  fresh,  and  to  be 
loved.  She  is  of  the  same  country  as  Dow- 
sabell  of  the  eighth  eclogue,  perhaps  own 
sister  to  that  '*  maiden  fair  and  free"  : 

This  maiden  in  a  morn  betime, 

Went  forth  when  May  was  in  her  prime, 

To  get  sweet  Cetywall, 
The  Honeysuckle,  the  Harlock, 
The  Lily  and  the  Lady-smock, 

To  deck  her  summer  hall. 

Love  is  also  most  clearly  the  inspiration  of 
the  fervid  shepherd's  song  in  ''  The  Shepherd^s 
Sirena,"  beginning 

Near  to  the  silver  Trent 
Sirena  dwelleth.  .  .  . 

Whether  the  love  of  Anne  Goodere  or  another, 
no  man  knows.  *'  The  Cryer  "  is  as  sophisti- 
cated as  Lodge's  '*  Love  in  my  bosom."  The 
poet  wants  a  cryer  to  help  him  find  his  heart : 

For  my  poor  heart  is  run  astray 
After  two  eyes  that  passed  this  way. 

It  is  unwise  to  visualise  the  once  tame  heart 
running  astray  with  a  dart  stuck  in  it,  and 
faith  and  troth  written  round  about  it,  and  the 
wayfarers  looking  out  for  it  in  order  to  im- 
pound or  send  it  back  ;  and  the  curious  fact 
is  that  the  dainty  tearful  frivolity  does  not  ask 

103 


Feminine  Influence  on  the   Poets 

us  to  visualise  in  this  way,  but  enables  us  to 
see  through  these  untoward  facts  to  the 
genuineness  of  the  amorous  spirit  playing 
behind  them — like  a  shepherd's  daughter 
masked  as  a  maid  of  honour.  It  may  be  that 
the  mere  name  of  Daffodil  was  enough  to  stir 
the  poet  to  these  verses.  A  name  is  enough, 
or  an  air,  and  Lord  Herbert  has  a  love-poem 
entitled  ''  Ditty  in  Imitation  of  the  Spanish 
Entre  Tantoque  el'Avril."  Who  will  be  the 
first  critic  to  cast  a  stone  at  the  poet  for  in- 
sincerity upon  so  slight-seeming  an  occasion  ? 
It  is  rash  at  best  to  attack  Petrarch  because 
we  may  feel  uncertain  regarding  his  twenty- 
one  years'  devotion  to  Laura.  The  uncertainty 
is  as  much  due  to  irrelevant  biographical 
discovery  as  to  the  quality  of  the  sonnets 
themselves.  Of  these  each  man  must  judge 
finally  in  his  capacity  as  human  being, 
but  not  without  having  learnt  and  perhaps 
forgotten  again  those  conventions  which  the 
poet  used  without  conscious  artifice.  As  the 
sonata  can  be  true-hearted  as  the  folk-song, 
so  the  elaborate  sonnet  or  epithalamium  can 
be  no  less  so  than  ''  Whistle  and  I'll  come  to 
ye,  my  lad."  One  may  be  just  as  difficult  to 
write  as  the  other,  and  the  authors  of  the  two 
have  an  equal  need  of  detachment  and  dramatic 
power.  Shakespeare  tried  both  extremes  in 
**  How  shall  I  your  true  love  know"  and 
104 


Passion  and  Poetry 

"  That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold/' 

and  in  neither  is  there  any  impediment  to  the 

emotion.     A  man  may  some  day  arise  who 

can  understand    Pope's  *' Windsor   Forest," 

and,  getting  behind  its  convention,  see  just 

what  love  of  old  trees  it  meant   in  Queen 

Anne's  time.     What  must  never  be  forgotten 

is   that   in    any   poem    the    traditional    art 

element   is   the   all   but    necessary   medium 

for  expressing  any  passion,  whether  simple 

and  fleshly  or  hesitating  and  complicated. 

Charles  Lamb  and  the  peasant  Clare  both, 

when  youths,  fell  in  love  with  girls  who  were 

successfully  forbidden   to   see   them — Lamb 

with  Ann  Simmons,  Clare  with  Mary  Joyce. 

Lamb  wrote  poems  to  Ann  in  1 795,  and  went 

mad  soon  afterwards,   in   1796;  he  thought 

the  girl  was  *'  the  more  immediate  cause  "  of 

his  frenzy.     She  is  the  Anna  of  his  earliest 

poems,   of  the   sonnet,   for  example,  which 

begins  : 

Methinks  how  dainty  sweet  it  were,  reclined 
Beneath  the  vast  out-stretching  branches  high 
Of  some  old  wood,  in  careless  sort  to  lie, 
Nor  of  the  busier  scenes  we  left  behind 
Aught  envying.    And,  O  Anna  !  mild-eyed  maid! 
Beloved  !    I  were  well  content  to  play 
With  thy  free  tresses  all  a  summer's  day, 
Losing  the  time  beneath  the  greenwood  shade. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  later  she  was  the  fair 
and  coy  "  Alice  Winterton  "  of  ''  Elia."     Yet 

105 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

if  only  the  sonnets  remained  for  our  informa- 
tion many  would  have  taken  it  for  granted  that 
they  were  literary  exercises  that  perhaps  dallied 
a  little  with  ''  the  innocence  of  love.'* 

Clare  was  about  fifteen  when  he  met  Mary 
Joyce,  a  farmer's  daughter,  at  Clinton.  For  six 
months  they  were  happy  together  until  she  was 
forbidden  to  meet  the  pauper's  poor  son.  Then 
he  used  to  carve  her  name  on  trees  and  walls, 
and  in  1865  could  still  be  seen  his  inscription 
of  **Mary"  and  ''J.C.  1808"  on  the  porch 
of  Clinton  Churchyard.  He  married  another 
woman  before  he  was  thirty.  In  1833,  when 
his  mind  was  out  of  tune  with  the  world, 
but  before  he  was  put  away  for  madness,  he 
saw  her  who  had  long  been  dead  passing  before 
his  window,  and  he  wrote  the  poem, 

First  love  will  with  the  heart  remain 
When  all  its  hopes  are  by.   .  .  . 

A  little  later  he  was  to  speak  to  an  invisible 
'*  Mary''  as  his  wife,  even  while  the  mother  of 
his  children  was  beside  him.  He  was  more 
and  more  haunted  by  her,  yet  addressed  one 
of  his  sweetest  poems  to  the  '*  Maid  of  Walk- 
herd,"  that  is,  his  wife.  When  he  escaped 
from  the  asylum  in  1841  and  walked  hungry 
and  with  torn  feet  towards  home,  day  after  day, 
he  awoke  at  night  thinking  he  heard  the  name 
''  Mary."  In  the  frenzy  of  weariness  he 
106 


Passion  and  Poetry 

hummed  '*  Highland  Mary,"  and  as  he  lay 
down  at  night  and  got  up  in  the  morning 
blessed  his  ''two  wives  and  both  their  fami- 
lies." He  heard  again  **the  old  story"  that 
Mary  had  been  dead  six  years,  though  he  had 
seen  her  only  a  year  before  ''as  young  as 
ever."  He  wrote  to  Mary  as  if  she  had  been 
alive,  and  he  wrote  many  poems  to  her,  nearly 
all  happy  with  assured  but  unsatisfied  affec- 
tion. In  these  poems  of  the  asylum  he  sings 
of  a  gipsy  maid,  probably  recalling  the  days 
when  he  was  familiar  with  gipsies.  As  he 
hummed  "  Highland  Mary,"  when  doubtless 
he  was  thinking  of  Mary  Joyce,  so  in  those 
poems  he  sometimes  loves  one  with  no  mortal 
name  and  identity,  a  dark  and  lovely  maiden 

Whose  name  I  sought  in  vain — 
Some  call  her  pretty  Lucy, 
And  others  honest  Jane. 

Though  he  is  precise  enough  to  mention 
the  print  of  Mary's  pattens  upon  the  stile,  and 
the  mole  on  her  neck,  there  is  no  taint  upon 
the  verses  of  what  had  intervened  between 
their  first  meeting  and  this  meeting  of  spirit 
and  flesh  in  the  asylum.  One  who  did  not 
know  might  suppose  that  the  poems  were 
"all  fancy,"  though  he  would  not  be  able  to 
give  us  the  meaning  of  these  two  words.  In 
the  face  of  these  things  it  is  bold  to  do  more 

107 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

than  smile  at  even  so  astonishing  a  conceit  as 
Donne's  '*  Flea,"  where  he  bids  his  mistress 
spare  the  **  three  lives"  in  the  one  flea  who 
has  sucked  the  blood  of  both  and  so  become 
their  '*  marriage  temple";  and  it  is  unwise  to 
dismiss  as  **  the  perfectly  contented  and  serene 
record  of  an  illicit,  and  doubtless  of  an 
ephemeral,  adventure,"  the  same  poet's ''Good- 
Morrow  "  beginning : 

I  wonder,  by  my  troth,  what  thou  and  I 
Did,  till  we  loved  ?  Were  we  not  wean'd  till  then  ? 
But  suck'd  on  country  pleasures,  childishly  ? 
Or  snorted  we  in  the  Seven  Sleepers'  den  ? 

The  silhouette  of  distant  trees  against  the 
half-risen  red  moon  seen  once  may  outlast  in 
the  mind  the  high  moon  of  a  week  of  nights, 
and  a  wanton  night  may  have  more  to  do 
with  poetry  than  a  golden-wedding  reached 
in  serenity.  Drayton  himself  once  turned 
upon  possible  critics  who  should  say,  "This 
man  is  not  in  love,"  and  retorted  : 

Ye  shallow  Censures !  sometimes  see  ye  not. 
In  greatest  perils,  some  men  pleasant  be ; 
Where  Fame  by  death  is  only  to  be  got, 
They  resolute  !  So  stands  the  case  with  me. 
Where  other  men,  in  depth  of  Passion  cry  ; 
I  laugh  at  Fortune,  as  in  jest  to  die ! 

He    was    only   in    high    spirits    when    he 

wrote  : 

io8 


Passion  and  Poetry- 
Get  up  and  let  us  see 
What  Beauty  it  shall  be 
That  Fortune  us  assigns. 

The  test  to  apply  is  whether  it  is  poetry  or  not. 
If  so,  thank  God  for  it ;  if  not,  leave  it ;  and 
remember  that  the  hour  when  we  can  exclaim  : 
''  O  Love  how  art  thou  tired  out  with  rhyme," 
as  Margaret  Newcastle  did,  is  not  the  hour 
for  poetry. 

There  are  several  poems  in  which  the  division 
is  marked  between  what  most  people  call ''  the 
facts  "  on  the  one  hand,  and  what  they  call 
''  poetry  "  on  the  other.  They  contain  a  more 
or  less  solid  body  of  experience  involved  in 
what  the  poet  has  used  to  take  it  out  of  time, 
which  we  shall  regard  as  decoration  or  not 
according  to  its  merit.  One  of  the  best  and 
simplest  of  these  is  '*  The  Kingis  Quair,"  or 
''  King's  Book  "  of  King  James  the  First  of 
Scotland.  He  was  taken  prisoner  by  the 
English  at  the  age  of  ten,  in  1405,  when  he 
was  on  the  way  to  school  in  France.  He 
spent  the  next  twenty  years  in  English 
prisons,  chiefly  at  Windsor  Castle  and  the 
Tower  of  London.  At  a  window  of  Windsor 
Castle  in  the  spring  of  1423  he  saw  Joan 
Beaufort,  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Somerset, 
walking  by.  He  fell  in  love  with  her  and 
during  the  spring  wrote  '*  The  Kingis  Quair.'* 
Next  year  he  married  her  in  April,  returned 

109 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

to  Scotland  and  received  his  crown  in  May. 
Thirteen  years  later  he  was  assassinated  and 
she  wounded  by  conspirators.  He  had  no 
mistresses  and  no  bastards.  His  queen 
married  again  within  two  years  of  his  death. 

Only  one  other  poem  that  we  know  is 
certainly  his,  '*A  Ballad  of  Good  Counsel" 
in  close  imitation  of  Chaucer's  ''  Fie  fro  the 
presse  and  dwel  with  sothfastnesse."  It  lays 
stress  upon  the  statement  that  the  careful 
virtuous  man  is  rewarded : 

Love  most  thy  God  that  first  thy  love  began, 
And  for  ilk  inch  he  will  thee  quit  a  span. 

'*  The  Kingis  Quair  "  is  also  full  of  Chaucer's 
influence,  and  some  passages  are  quite  closely 
copied.  His  looking  out  of  the  castle  window 
at  Joan  Beaufort  reminds  us  of  Palamon  and 
Arcite  first  beholding  Emelye.  When  he  has 
seen  her  he  lifts  his  face  to  the  sky  and  speaks 
seven  verses  to  Venus.  He  very  soon  goes 
far  afield  in  dream — into  the  palace  of  Venus 
who  grants  his  request  that  she  will  help  him 
to  see  the  maiden  again  ;  into  the  palace  of 
Minerva  who  tells  him  that  he  can  only 
succeed  if  his  love  be  virtuous.  Returning  to 
earth  he  comes  to  Fortune  and  her  wheel,  and 
has  to  climb  it,  but  she  takes  him  by  the  ear 
so  earnestly  in  saying  farewell  that  he  awakes. 
Then  a  dove  brings  him  good  news.  If  any 
no 


Passion  and  Poetry 

should  ask  why  he  makes  so  much  stir  about 
so  small  a  matter,  he  would  answer  that  who- 
soever has  crept  out  of  Hell  into  Heaven  would 
give  one  word  of  gratitude  but  six  or  seven  of 
joy — or  as  it  might  be  put,  one  word  to  the 
I  occasion  and  six  or  seven  to  the  stir  of  blissful 
I  fancy  coming  after.  After  a  prayer  to  Venus 
and  thanks  to  the  gods,  Fortune,  the  nightin- 
gale, the  lucky  castle  window  and  the  saints  of 
March,  and  a  recommendation  of  his  book  to 
the  poems  of  Gower  and  Chaucer,  those  poets 
laureate  superlative  in  morality  and  eloquence, 
he  comes  to  an  end.  To  us  the  central  ex- 
perience is  everything — the  strong  unhappy 
king,  looking  out  of  the  prison  window  and 
seeing  the  golden-haired  maiden  in  rich  attire 
trimmed  with  pearls,  rubies,  emeralds  and 
sapphires,  a  chaplet  of  red,  white  and  blue 
feathers  on  her  head,  a  heart-shaped  ruby  on 
a  chain  of  fine  gold  hanging  over  her  white 
throat,  her  dress  looped  up  carelessly  to 
walk  in  that  fresh  morning  of  nightingales 
in  the  new-leaved  thickets — she  in  her  youth, 
loveliness  and  meek  carriage,  and  her  little 
dog  with  his  bells  to  be  envied  because  he 
plays  at  her  side.  The  nightingale  stops 
singing.  He  dares  not  clap  his  hands  to 
make  it  go  on  lest  it  should  fly  off;  if  he  does 
nothing  it  will  sleep ;  if  he  calls  out  it  will 
not  understand  ;    and  he  begs  the  wind  to 

III 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

shake  the  leaves  and  awake  the  song.  And 
the  bird  sings  again.  Some  have  tried  to  show 
that  the  description  of  Joan  Beaufort  was 
borrowed  from  Chaucer's  '*  Court  of  Love/' 
but  Professor  Skeat  says  it  was  not.  That 
'*  The  Kingis  Quair,"  even  where  it  is  closely 
related  to  experience,  bears  a  close  resemblance 
to  other  poetry  of  the  age,  takes  away  neither 
from  our  enjoyment  nor  from  the  genuineness 
of  the  poem.  A  little  more  conventionalisation 
and  all  might  be  over,  but  as  it  is,  abstracted 
from  the  life  of  one  May  morning  without 
losing  the  breath  of  life,  the  central  descriptive 
stanzas  remain  not  merely  to  leaven  the  whole 
but  to  justify  the  whole.  Joan  Beaufort's 
dress,  the  nightingale  singing,  the  little  dog 
with  the  bells,  but  also  the  prayer  to  Venus, 
the  dream,  and  the  white  dove,  were  all  in  the 
same  world  to  King  James.  We  may  not 
care  for  these  other  things,  but  that  is  because 
he  was  not  great  enough  poet  to  make  us  care. 
It  is  not  the  work  of  a  great  imagination  :  even 
the  figure  of  Joan  is  not  created  simply  out 
of  King  James's  words  and  rhythms,  but 
has  need  of  the  reader's  charity  to  lend  it 
just  that  help  from  real  life  which  made  it 
so  vivid  a  thing  to  the  poet,  writing  there  at 
Windsor,  in  the  very  spring  of  the  maiden's 
apparition. 

Most  will  find  it  easier  to  like  such  a  poem 

112 


Passion  and  Poetry 

after  learning  something  of  its  foundation  of 
truth.  The  most  threadbare  old  poem  would 
suddenly  rise  in  value  if  we  knew  as  much 
of  its  origin.  How,  for  example,  would 
**Greensleeves'*  gain!  Suppose  one  of  the 
delving  race  to  come  upon  the  portrait  of  a 
girl  who  ought  to  have  waited  for  Frederick 
Sandys  to  catch  the  full  anger  of  her  eyes, 
the  pride  of  her  lips  and  trusses  of  yellow 
hair,  and  it  was  ''  Greensleeves,'*  with  her 
full  name  written  underneath.  Or  suppose 
it  w^as  a  series  of  letters  to  another  woman 
about  nothing  but  hounds  except  that  in 
a  postscript,  she  quotes  the  first  verse  of 
the  newest  song  her  late  lover  had  sent 
her — 

Alas,  my  love,  you  do  me  wrong 

To  cast  me  off  discourteously  ; 

And  I  have  loved  you  so  long, 

Delighting  in  your  company. 
Greensleeves  was  all  my  joy, 
Greensleeves  was  my  delight, 
Greensleeves  was  my  heart  of  gold, 
And  who  but  Lady  Greensleeves  ? 

Many  would  remember  that  Shakespeare  and 
Pepys  knew  ''  Greensleeves,"  and  that  they 
themselves  had  heard  the  tune  as  children 
and  that  it  was  a  pretty  name.  Every  verse 
would  start  to  life  which  the  lover  wrote  in 
complaint — 

U  113 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

My  men  were  clothM  all  in  green, 
And  they  did  ever  wait  on  thee ; 
All  this  was  gallant  to  be  seen, 
And  yet  thou  wouldst  not  love  me. 

Greensleeves,  &c. 

How  his  men  waited  upon  her  everywhere, 
how  he  sent  her  dainties  every  morning, 
how  she  had  all  that  she  could  desire  and 
music  to  play  and  sing,  and  it  was  he  that 
paid  for  all  this  gear,  and  yet  she  would  not 
love  him.  It  has  a  beautiful,  a  most  gallant 
mournful  melody,  and  it  half  creates  her 
every  time  it  is  sung — the  wildest  and  love- 
liest creature  in  a  whole  county  up  to  her 
angry  eyes  in  foxgloves  and  to  her  waist  in 
fern,  and  laughing  as  shrill  and  as  little  like 
a  woman  as  a  woodpecker.  And  the  music 
stops  and  she  disappears.  The  words  alone 
will  not  yield  her  up.  It  has  no  discoverable 
associations  for  me,  and  yet  upon  sweet  lips 
it  is — well,  nearly — the  dearest  of  English 
love-songs.  Perhaps  the  man  who  wrote  it 
was  not  her  lover  at  all,  but  a  drunken  fiddler 
who  had  lain  out  in  the  gossamer  all  a 
summer  night,  until  the  sun  was  high  up 
and  the  larks  ceaseless  and  indistinguishable 
in  their  medley.  Then  something  not  so  loud 
as  a  snake  passed  him  in  the  grass,  and  he 
leapt  up  to  his  feet,  the  cobwebs  of  years 
suddenly  cleared  from  his  eyes,  to  see  her 
114 


Passion  and  Poetry 

nodding  to  herself  in  passing  him  and  looking 
his  way  but  not  seeing  him  ;  so  that  he  burst 
out  into  tears  and  threw  himself  upon  the 
grass.  There  he  struggled  awhile  and  lay 
still  lest  he  should  begin  to  think  again, 
until  he  rose  up  swiftly  and  ran,  but  she 
was  gone;  she  also  had  run,  out  of  mere 
wantonness,  none  knew  where  ;  and  thus  he 
made  at  the  same  time  the  song  and  the 
melody  of  Greensleeves. 

The  men  who  write  for  music  are  the  most 
difficult  of  all,  the  Elizabethan,  Thomas 
Campion,  for  example,  one  of  the  greatest  of 
them.  Practically  nothing  is  known  about 
his  life  and  nature.  Mr.  Percival  Vivian,  his 
latest  editor,  thinks  that  he  was  one  of  those 
''  in  whom  friendship  rises  almost  to  the  level 
of  a  passion,"  and  also  that  *'the  divinities 
addressed  in  the  Latin  poems  were  no 
creatures  of  the  imagination."  But  it  takes 
a  lifetime  to  discriminate  between  truth  and 
convention  in  Latin  verses.  We  may  take 
it,  however,  that  he  was  an  amorous  man. 
He  probably  died  a  bachelor.  The  range  of 
his  English  songs  from  unmoving  conven- 
tionality to  what  looks  like  perfectly  ripened 
passionate  utterance  is  very  wide.  He  works 
much  in  the  proverbial  and  worldly  view  of 
women,  saying,  for  example — 

She  hath  more  beauty  than  becomes  the  chaste. 

115 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

This  may  mean  nothing  more  than  that  he 
wished  to  be  thought  licentious  and  proud  of 
it.  The  difficulty  is  always  complicated  by 
the  fact  that  he  could  rely  upon  his  airs 
to  correct  or  eke  out  the  effect  of  his  words. 
Yet  what  seems  the  very  language  and 
cadence  of  a  profound  emotion,  remembered 
or  even  still  present,  often  breaks  the  suavity 
and  nullity  of  Campion's  average  verse.  A 
song  begins  :  **  Come,  you  pretty  false-eyed 
wanton,  leave  your  crafty  smiling,''  and  we 
are  prepared  for  a  frivolous  show  of  possibly 
illicit  courting  and  no  more ;  but  the  third 
verse  begins  : 

Would  it  were  dumb  midnight  now, 
When  all  the  world  is  sleeping  ; 

Would  this  place  some  Desert  were, 
Which  no  man  hath  in  keeping — 

and  the  voice  is  that  of  a  man  and  not  of  a 
songster.  There  is  a  magical  reality  thrust 
upon  us,  a  whole  clear-lit  scene,  by  the  open- 
ing words  of  another  : 

Sleep,  angry  beauty,  sleep  and  fear  not  me. 

The  rest  is  nothing :  he  has  left  the  music  to 
hold  us  if  possible  upon  the  plane  of  those 
eight  words,  and  whether  he  had  Mellea 
or  Caspia  or  Chloe  or  Meroe  in  his  mind, 
ii6 


Passion  and  Poetry 

who  knows?  There  is  a  poem  where  a 
woman  sings  and  says  at  last : 

.  .  .  Till  then,  for  Hope's  sweet  sake,  rest  your 

tir'd  mind, 
And  not  so  much  as  see  me  in  the  street. 

Here  he  seems  to  forget  the  song  and  to 
recall  some  experience  of  London.  He  has  a 
score  of  openings  such  as  might  set  a  lover's 
feet  at  once  upon  the  path  of  desire — **  When 
to  her  lute  Corinna  sings,"  for  example ; 
*'  Follow  your  saint,  follow  with  accents 
sweet  "  is  one  ;  others  are  **  When  thou  must 
home  to  shades  of  underground,"  **  Never 
weather-beaten  sail  more  willing  beat  to 
shore,"  ''  Shall  I  come,  sweet  Love,  to  thee, 
when  the  evening  beams  are  set,"  **  There 
is  a  garden  in  her  face."  Of  these,  "  Never 
weather-beaten  sail "  is  from  a  sacred  song. 
Love,  woman  perhaps,  but  not  a  woman, 
inspires  his  wandering  emotion.  Led  on  by 
rhyme  and  by  cadence,  he  uses  loving  phrases 
rather  as  if  he  were  dreaming  upon  the 
strings  of  an  instrument  than  devoting  it  to 
one  constant  end.  Cupid's  fire,  beauty  un- 
relenting, myrtle  arbours,  traitorous  kisses, 
rosy  cheeks,  deceit  and  beauty,  roses  and 
white  lilies,  are  portions  of  a  mosaic  arranged 
in  half-wanton  seriousness,  broken  once  and 
again  by  a  phrase  like  *'  O  then  we  both  will  sit 

117 


Feminine  Influence  on  the   Poets 

in  some  unhaunted  shade  "  where  he  seems 
to  have  forgotten  to  play.  He  leaves  it  to 
singer  or  reader  to  fit  them  to  a  mood  of 
constancy,  and  to  find  that  there  is  none 
which  they  will  not  fit.  Only,  nothing  is 
here  for  the  abandonment  of  simple  passion, 
for  the  bridal  of  the  virgin  priestess  on  the 
solitary  island  crags  who  has  found  her  love 
there  in  a  stranger  saved  from  the  waters — 

O  joy,  when  dimly,  at  last  beholds  each  one. 
The  other  s  semblant,  in  this  doubtful  gloom. 
Then  whispered  speech,  sweet  knitting  of  true 

palms, 
Already  knit  their  hearts.     Her  mantle,  warm. 
Of  wadmel,  then  she  splayed  about  them  both. 
They  creep  together,  in  that  fear  and  cold, 
In  dim  sea-cave.     Smiles  out,  in  firmament. 
The  hoary  girdled,  infinite,  night  of  stars 
Above  them :  like  as  when,  in  sweet  spring-time. 
With  wind-flowers  white,  some  glade  is  storied 

seen ; 
Whereas,  from  part  to  part,  like  silver  stream. 
Shine  hemlocks,  stitchworts,  sign  of  former  path. 
To  her  innocent  bosom,  she  him  gathers,  warm  ; 
And  girded,  each,  of  other's  palms,  they  sleep. 
But  Cloten,  waking,  spread,  to  heaven,  his  palms. 
Calling  high  gods  to  witness  of  his  truth  ; 
His  being,  knit  to  this  nymph,  for  life  and  death. 
O'ermuch  she  travailled  hath,  to-day,  and  run  ; 
Nor,  child,  wist,  risen,  she  hath  known  a  man : 
Yet  feels  that  new  in  her,  as  were  unmeet, 
She  as  tofore,  on  Sena's  sacred  hearth. 
Wait ;  wherefore  gan  she  weep ;  but  fears  him 

wake. 

ii8 


Passion  and  Poetry 

It  is  strange  to  think  that  in  that  first 
great  age  of  English  poetry  such  blissful 
simplicity  of  painting  was  impossible  to 
men  who  had  loved  women,  and  that  it 
was  left  to  be  accomplished  in  our  time 
by  Mr.  Doughty. 


119 


chapter  Six :  Mothers  of  Poets 

COWPER  was  born  in  1731,  his  mother 
having  been  a  Miss  Donne,  probably 
of  the  same  Welsh  family  as  the  poet 
Donne.  She  died  in  1737.  Fifty-two  years 
later,  in  1790,  his  long-absent  cousin,  Mrs.  Bod- 
ham,  formerly  Anne  or  **  Rose  "  Donne,  sent 
him  his  mother  s  picture.  He  wrote  to  his 
familiar  cousin,  Lady  Hesketh,  telling  her 
that  he  had  rather  possess  this  picture  than 
the  richest  jewel  in  the  British  crown.  He 
remembered  his  mother  well  enough  to 
know  that  the  portrait  bore  a  very  exact 
resemblance  :  he  loved  her  ''  with  an  affection 
that  her  death,  fifty-two  years  since,  has  not 
in  the  least  abated."  To  Mrs.  Bodham  he 
wrote  on  the  following  day,  February  27, 
1790: 

Every  creature  that  bears  any  affinity  to  my 
mother  is  dear  to  me,  and  you,  the  daughter  of  her 
brother,  are  but  one  remove  distant  from  her :  I 
love  you,  therefore,  and  love  you  much,  both  for 
her  sake  and  for  your  own.  The  world  could  not 
have  furnished  you  with  a  present  so  acceptable  to 
me,  as  the  picture  which  you  have  so  kindly  sent 
me.  I  received  it  the  night  before  last,  and  viewed 
it  with  a  trepidation  of  nerves  and  spirits  somewhat 
akin  to  what  I  should  have  felt  had  the  dear  original 
presented  herself  to  my  embraces.  I  kissed  it,  and 
hung  it  where  it  is  the  last  object  that  I  see  at 
night,  and,  of  course,  the  first  on  which  I  open  my 
eyes  in  the  morning. 
120 


Mothers  of  Poets 

.  .  .  There  is  in  me,  I  believe,  more  of  the  Donne 
than  of  the  Cowper  ;  and  though  I  love  all  of  both 
names,  and  have  a  thousand  reasons  to  love  those 
of  my  own  name,  yet  I  feel  the  bond  of  nature 
draw  me  to  your  side.  I  was  thought  in  the  days 
of  my  childhood  much  to  resemble  my  mother ;  and 
in  my  natural  temper,  of  which  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
eight  I  must  be  supposed  to  be  a  competent  judge, 
can  trace  both  her  and  my  late  uncle,  your  father. 
Somewhat  of  his  irritability  ;  and  a  little,  I  would 

hope,  both  of  his  and  her I  know  not  what  to 

call  it,  without  seeming  to  praise  myself,  which  is 
not  my  intention,  but  speaking  to  you,  I  will  even 
speak  out,  and  say  good  nature, 

(Cowper  was  fond  of  remembering  that  he 
was  a  Donne,  how  that  he  was  of  the  same 
family  as  John  Donne,  and  how  that  he  was 
Welsh  in  his  touchiness.)  Upon  this  occasion 
he  wrote  his  finest  and  almost  his  best  known 
lines,  *'  On  the  receipt  of  my  mother's  picture 
out  of  Norfolk."  He  recalls  how  his  servants 
tried  to  quiet  his  sorrow  at  her  death  by  tell- 
ing him  she  would  return  .  .  .  recalls 

The  nightly  visits  to  my  chamber  made. 

That  thou  mightst  know  me  safe  and  warmly  laid : 

The  morning  bounties  ere  I  left  my  home. 

The  biscuit  or  confectionery  plum  ; 

The  fragrant  waters  on  my  cheeks  bestowed 

By  thy  own  hand,  till  fresh  they  shone  and 

glowed ; 
All  this,  and  more  endearing  still  than  all. 
Thy  constant  flow  of  love,  that  knew  no  fall, 
Ne'er  roughened  by  those  cataracts  and  breaks 
That  humour  interposed  too  often  makes.  .  .  . 

121 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 
and  how 

When   playing   with   thy   vesture's   tissued 

flowers, 
The  violet,  the  pink,  and  jessamine, 
I  pricked  them  into  paper  with  a  pin 
(And  thou  wast  happier  than  myself  the  while, 
Wouldst  softly  speak,  and  stroke  my  head  and 

smile). 

It  vi^as  of  her  that  he  thought  vv^hen  he 
replied  in  *'The  Task"  to  the  imaginary 
question  :  '*  What's  the  w^orld  to  you  ?  " 

Much.     I  was  born  of  woman,  and  drew  milk. 

As  sweet  as  charity,  from  human  breasts, 

I  think,  articulate,  I  laugh  and  weep, 

And  exercise  all  functions  of  a  man. 

How  then  should  I  and  any  man  that  lives 

Be  strangers  to  each  other  ?  .  .  . 

To  state  the  influence  of  such  a  relationship 
is  impossible.  The  explicit  evidence  is  very 
little  concerning  Cowper's  mother  or  the 
mothers  of  most  other  English  poets.  Who 
was  Chaucer's  ?  We  know  that  she  was  pro- 
bably named  Agnes,  and  that  she  married 
again  after  her  husband's  death,  Geoffrey 
Chaucer  being  then  a  man  and  in  the  service 
of  the  King,  Edward  III.  He  was  not  emi- 
nently a  *' mother's  son  "  as  some  poets  are. 
Spenser,  perhaps,  was,  but  we  only  know 
that  his  mother's  name  was  Elizabeth.     Not 

122 


Mothers  of  Poets 

more  is  to  be  learned  of  Mary  Arden,  Shakes- 
peare's mother,  though  Mr.  Frank  Harris 
concludes  from  *'  Coriolanus  "  that  the  poet 
**  held  her  in  extraordinary  esteem  and  affec- 
tion, and  mourned  her  after  her  death  as  '  the 
noblest  mother  in  the  world.' "  Sidney's 
mother,  being  a  Dudley,  a  daughter  of  the 
great  Duke  of  Northumberland,  we  know 
better.  She  had  a  masculine  firmness  of 
character  and  weight  of  mind,  and  a  woman's 
endurance  and  submission.  She  was  in  every 
way  the  equal  of  her  husband,  Sir  Henry 
Sidney,  Elizabeth's  Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland, 
and  Sir  Philip  rightly  held  it  to  be  his  chief 
honour  that  he  was  a  Dudley.  She  was  a 
woman  of  equal  courage,  intelligence  and 
fortitude,  and  it  was  her  fortune  to  display 
them  always  at  the  side  of  her  husband  in 
his  difficult  task  of  serving  the  Queen  and 
governing  Ireland  and  Wales.  She  died  in 
the  same  year  as  Sir  Henry  and  Sir  Philip, 
following  her  husband,  followed  by  her  son. 
Not  even  the  name  is  remembered  of  Dray- 
ton's mother,  through  whom  he  may  have 
had  the  Welsh  blood  of  the  not  improbable 
report.  Mars  ton  had  an  ''  Italian  and  pro- 
bably Catholic  mother,"  but  what  mothers 
had  Marlowe  and  Nashe  ?  Lodge  wrote  an 
epitaph  on  his  mother  in  1579,  but  it  has 
disappeared. 

123 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Donne's  mother  is  more  clear  to  us  if  we 
may  beheve  Walton.  She  was  a  Heywood  of 
the  blood  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  like  her 
husband  a  Catholic,  and  as  he  died  when 
the  child  was  three  her  influence  was  single. 
She  did  not  allow  the  nurse  to  whip  him 
for  faults,  but  had  them  reported  to  herself. 
She  and  her  friends  were  careful  of  his  educa- 
tion, and  gave  him  tutors  in  *'the  mathe- 
matics and  in  all  the  other  liberal  sciences," 
and  in  '*  the  principles  of  the  Romish  church  ; 
of  which  these  tutors  professed,  though 
secretly,  themselves  to  be  members.*'  But 
he  was  at  Oxford  in  his  eleventh  year,  and 
removed  to  Cambridge  in  his  fourteenth. 
He  says  himself  that  study  diverted  his 
tendency  to  the  Roman  faith  before  he  was 
twenty.  Mr.  Gosse  holds  the  opinion  that 
after  he  went  to  London,  about  1590,  at  the 
age  of  seventeen,  he  *'  found  himself  free  from 
his  mother's  tutelage,"  and  his  attachment  to 
that  faith  declined.  But  in  1616  he  wrote 
that  whatever  he  could  do  for  her  was  a  debt 
to  her  '*from  whom  I  had  that  education 
which  must  make  my  fortune."  She  survived 
him,  a  second  time  a  widow,  until  1632,  and 
he  left  her  provided  for. 

Magdalen  Newport,  the  mother  of  Edward, 
Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  and  of  George 
Herbert,  is  distinct  both  as  the  mother  and 
124 


Mothers  of  Poets 

the  friend  of  poets.  She  was  born  in  or  about 
1565,  and  bore  ten  children,  Edward  Herbert 
in  1583  and  George  in  1593.  Her  husband, 
Richard  Herbert,  died  in  1597.  Her  son 
Edward  says  that  she  '*  brought  up  her  chil- 
dren carefully  and  put  them  in  good  courses 
for  making  their  fortunes,"  not  marrying 
again  until  1608,  but  *' proposing  to  herself 
as  her  principal  care  the  education  of  her 
children."  Her  second  husband.  Sir  John 
Danvers,  proved  a  considerate  step-father. 

When  Edward  Herbert  was  twelve  he  was 
taken  with  some  of  his  brothers  to  Oxford, 
where  their  mother  lived  with  them.  She 
gave  him  a  tutor,  but  **  still  kept  him  in  a 
moderate  awe  of  herself,  and  so  much  under 
her  own  eye  as  to  see  and  converse  with  him 
daily ;  but  she  managed  this  power  over  him 
without  any  such  rigid  sourness  as  might 
make  her  company  a  torment  to  her  child ; 
but  with  such  a  sweetness  and  compliance 
with  the  recreations  and  pleasures  of  youth 
as  did  incline  him  willingly  to  spend  much  of 
his  time  in  the  company  of  his  dear  and 
careful  mother."  And  though  Edward  mar- 
ried soon  after,  he  and  his  wife  remained  in 
the  same  house  with  his  mother  until  he  was 
about  eighteen,  when  he  had  one  child.  At 
Oxford  '*her  great  and  harmless  wit,  her 
cheerful  gravity,  and  her  obliging  behaviour  " 

125 


Feminine   Influence  on  the   Poets 

gained  her  the  friendship  of  men  of  worth  or 
learning,  and  particularly  John  Donne.  The 
year  of  her  second  marriage  was  George 
Herbert's  first  at  Cambridge.  It  was  also  in 
1608  that  he  sent  his  mother  a  letter,  declaring 
that  his  ''  poor  abilities  in  poetry  "  were  to  be 
*'  consecrated  to  God's  glory,"  and  enclosing 
the  poem  which  asks  : 

My  God,  where  is  that  ancient  heat  towards  thee 
Wherewith  whole  shoals  of  Martyrs  once  did  burn 
Besides  their  other  flames  ?     Doth  poetry 
Wear  Venus'  livery  ?  only  serve  her  turn  ?  .  .  . 

She  kept  him  to  the  University  at  a  time 
when  he  inclined  to  travel — *'yet  he  would 
by  no  means  satisfy  his  own  devices  at  so 
dear  a  rate  as  to  prove  an  undutiful  son  to  so 
affectionate  a  mother ;  but  did  always  submit 
to  her  wisdom."  When  he  was  thirty  and 
Public  Orator  at  Cambridge,  he  wrote  her 
a  letter  to  fortify  her  in  sickness,  which  may 
be  taken  as  some  proof  of  an  honest  as  well 
as  a  dignified  understanding  between  mother 
and  son.  In  1626  he  became  Prebendary  of 
Layton  Ecclesia  in  Huntingdonshire,  and 
proposed  to  restore  the  church.  His  mother 
feared  for  the  great  trouble  and  charge  of  the 
undertaking  and  sent  for  him  to  Chelsea, 
saying : 

George,  I  sent  for  you  to  persuade  you  to  com- 
mit a  wrong,  by  giving  your  patron  as  good  a  gift 

126 


Mothers  of  Poets 

as  he  gave  you  :  namely,  that  you  give  him  back  his 
prebend  :  for,  George,  it  is  not  for  your  weak  body 
and  empty  purse  to  undertake  to  build  Churches. 

But  he  begged  her  to  allow  him  *'  at  the  age 
of  thirty-three  years  to  become  an  undutiful 
son,"  and  she  became  a  subscriber  to  the  fund 
and  procured  another. 

The  year  before  this,  1625,  is  the  year  to 
v^^hich  Mr.  Gosse  attributes  Donne's  poem 
upon  Lady  Danvers,  *'The  Autumnal 
Beauty  "— 

No  spring,  nor  summer  beauty  hath  such  grace 
As  I  have  seen  in  one  autumnal  face  .  .  . 
Here  where  still  evening  is,  not  noon,  nor  night ; 
Where  no  voluptuousness,  yet  all  delight. 

Tvi^o  years  later  she  died,  and  Donne  pro- 
nounced her  funeral  oration,  praising  her  for 
her  cheerfulness,  vi^it  and  godliness,  her 
hospitality  and  her  almsgiving  to  the  deserv- 
ing and  the  undeserving.  With  this  sermon 
w^ere  published  the  Latin  and  Greek  poems 
written  in  her  honour  by  George  Herbert, 
enumerating  her  virtues  of  modesty,  religion, 
orderly  domesticity,  grace  and  liberality,  her 
mastery  of  the  pen  ;  and  ''  thine,"  he  says, 
"  this  learning  is,  which  I  derived  from  thee." 
Piety  was  not  above  flattery,  but  it  seems 
clear  that  Herbert  felt  her  power  as  a  very 
real  presence.     He  was  much  more  her  son 

127 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

than  the  black  Lord  Edward  Herbert,  con- 
spicuously a  Welshman  as  enemies  let  him 
know,  a  vain  bold  man,  independent  in 
thought  and  action,  chiefly  remembered  now 
for  his  own  account  of  his  horsemanship, 
unconquerable  skill  as  a  duellist,  and  personal 
charm. 

Pope  was  the  only  child  of  his  mother,  who 
was  forty-six  years  old,  like  her  husband,  at 
his  birth  in  1688.  She  lived  until  1733  an 
entirely  fond  mother,  and  he  responded  to 
her  with  an  affection  stronger  than  he  ever 
had  for  any  one  else  and  quite  untroubled. 
He  allowed  her  to  copy  portions  of  his  trans- 
lation of  Homer  for  the  press  in  spite  of  her 
unorthodoxy  in  spelling.  His  words  upon 
her  death  are  the  only  sweet  words  he  ever 
wrote  except  when  he  mentioned  her  in  life : 

I  thank  God  her  death  was  as  easy  as  her  life 
was  innocent ;  and  as  it  cost  her  not  a  groan,  nor 
even  a  sigh,  there  is  yet  upon  her  countenance  such 
an  expression  of  tranquilHty,  nay,  almost  of  pleasure, 
that  it  is  even  enviable  to  behold  it.  It  would 
afford  the  finest  image  of  a  saint  expired  that  ever 
painter  drew,  and  it  would  be  the  greatest  obligation 
which  ever  that  obliging  art  could  ever  bestow  upon 
a  friend,  if  you  would  come  and  sketch  it  for  me. 
I  am  sure  if  there  be  no  very  prevalent  obstacle,  you 
will  leave  any  common  business  to  do  this,  and  I 
shall  hope  to  see  you  this  evening  as  late  as  you 
will,  or  to-morrow  morning  as  early,  before  this 
winter  flower  is  faded. 

128 


Mothers   of  Poets 

Gray  had  a  brutal  and  half-mad  father,  a  rich 
man  who  would  yet  not  pay  for  his  son's  educa- 
tion. The  poet  was  the  only  child  reared  by 
Dorothy  Gray  though  she  bore  twelve.  She 
and  her  elder  sister  kept  a  milliner's  shop  to 
make  money  for  the  boy's  expenses  at  Eton 
and  Peterhouse,  Cambridge,  and  she  asked  a 
lawyer  in  vain  for  some  hope  of  protection 
from  the  husband  who  threatened  to  turn  the 
sister  out  of  the  shop.  The  mother's  devotion 
was  to  the  son,  not  the  poet,  of  whom  she 
knew  nothing,  and  he  answered  it  with 
tenderness,  constancy  and  self-sacrifice.  She 
died  in  1753,  when  her  son  was  thirty-six. 
He  was  at  her  bedside,  and  dreadful  as  the 
scene  was, — 

**I  know,"  he  wrote,  *'  I  am  the  better  for  it.  We 
are  all  idle  and  thoughtless  things,  and  have  no 
sense,  no  use  in  the  world  any  longer  than  that  sad 
impression  lasts ;  the  deeper  it  is  engraved  the 
better." 

He  wrote  upon  her  tombstone  at  Stoke  Poges 
this  epitaph  : 

In  the  same  pious  confidence,  beside  her  friend 
and  sister,  here  sleep  the  remains  of  Dorothy  Gray, 
widow,  the  careful  tender  mother  of  many  children, 
one  of  whom  alone  bad  the  misfortune  to  survive 
her. 

Of  Blake's  mother  we  know  practically 
nothing  except  that  when,  as  a  child,  he  came 

I  129 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

home  with  the  story  of  seeing  a  tree  on 
Peckham  Rye,  ''filled  with  angels,  bright 
angelic  wings  bespangling  every  bough  like 
stars,"  his  mother  saved  him  from  his  honest 
father's  thrashing.  But  on  a  similar  occasion 
she  whipped  him  herself.  Crabbe's  mother 
probably  played  a  similar  part,  for  her  husband 
was  an  ill-tempered  and  intemperate  man, 
and  she  was  a  religious  woman  some  years 
his  senior,  and  often  an  invalid.  Chatterton 
was  a  posthumous  child,  brought  up  entirely 
by  his  mother.  Shelley's  mother  intervened 
for  him  against  Sir  Timothy.  She  had  more 
sense  than  her  husband  and  was  more  tolerant, 
though  her  tolerance  was  raised  upon  founda- 
tions resembling  those  of  the  neighbouring 
''fish  and  pheasant  ladies"  as  Shelley  calls 
them.  She  intercepted  a  rash  letter  from 
Shelley  to  his  father  when  he  had  been  sent 
down  from  Oxford,  and  she  sent  him  money 
for  his  expenses.  Had  he  been  able  to  suffer 
her  "irresistible  eloquence"  on  the  subject  of 
the  weather  he  would  have  loved  her  and 
understood  her  more  ;  but  she  either  had  no 
sympathy  with  his  ideas  and  affections  or 
could  not  express  it  in  away  to  move  Shelley. 
He  supposed  she  must  have  thought  him 
mad  at  school  when  she  did  not  reply  to  a 
letter  describing  his  discussions  on  love  with 
a  friend  ;  she  was,  he  thought,  quite  rational 
130 


Mothers  of  Poets 

and  even  liberal,  and  he  quoted  as  a  proof  of 
it  her  words  :  ''  I  think  prayer  and  thanks- 
giving are  of  no  use.  If  a  man  is  a  good  man, 
philosopher,  or  Christian,  he  will  do  very  well 
in  whatever  future  state  awaits  us."  Shelley 
was  emotional  rather  than  affectionate,  and, 
though  he  sent  his  mother  'Move"  and  his 
father  *'  sentiments  of  respect,"  he  probably 
lost  all  conscious  thought  of  his  mother  when 
he  had  taken  his  own  path  and  satisfied  him- 
self that  she  was  only  a  spirit  somewhere 
between  the  evil  and  the  foolish  spirits  who 
tormented  him.  Landor's  mother,  like 
Shelley's,  wished  him  to  live  as  a  country 
gentleman.  She,  too,  had  sense,  but  not 
much  power  of  expression  except  through  the 
affections.  She  begged  him  to  take  care  of 
his  health  and  not  to  hurt  his  eyes  or  rack  his 
brains  too  much  over  books  for  the  world's 
amusement.  His  Latin  poetry  she  under- 
stood to  be  good  in  the  eyes  of  judges,  but 
'*  one  cannot  read  it,  to  understand  it,  one- 
self.'* 

Wordsworth's  mother  died  when  he  was 
eight.  She  was  Anne  Cookson,  a  mercer's 
daughter  of  Penrith.  He  remembered  her 
''  pinning  a  nosegay  to  my  breast  when  I  was 
going  to  say  the  Catechism  in  the  church,  as 
was  customary  before  Easter,"  and  a  friend 
told    him   she   once   said   that    he  was   the 

131 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

only  one  of  her  five  children  who  made  her 
anxious,  and  *'  he  would  be  remarkable  either 
for  good  or  evil."  The  cause  of  which  pro- 
phecy was,  says  Wordsworth,  *'  that  I  was  of 
a  stiff,  moody  and  violent  temper."  In  the 
Prelude  he  speaks  of  the  infant  who  ''  with 
his  soul  drinks  in  the  feelings  of  his  Mother's 
eye,"  and  tells  how 

By  intercourse  of  touch 
I  held  mute  dialogues  with  my  Mother's  heart. 

And  on  a  later  page  he  calls  her  '*  the  heart 
and  hinge  of  all  our  learnings  and  our  loves," 
one  '*  not  falsely  taught, 

Fetching  her  goodness  rather  from  times  past, 

Than  shaping  novelties  for  times  to  come. 

Had  no  presumption,  no  such  jealousy, 

Nor  did  by  habit  of  her  thoughts  mistrust 

Our  nature,  but  had  virtual  faith  that  He 

Who  fills  the  mother's  breast  with  innocent  milk, 

Doth  also  for  our  nobler  part  provide, 

Under  His  great  correction  and  control. 

As  innocent  instincts,  and  as  innocent  food  ; 

Or  draws  for  minds  that  are  left  free  to  trust 

In  the  simplicities  of  opening  life 

Sweet  honey  out  of  spurned  or  dreaded  weeds  .  .  . 

.  .  .   Pure 
From  anxious  fear  of  error  or  mishap, 
And  evil,  overweeningly  so-called  ; 
Was  not  puffed  up  by  false  unnatural  hopes, 
Nor  selfish  with  unnecessary  cares, 
Nor  with  impatience  from  the  season  asked 
More  than  its  timely  produce ;  rather  loved 
132 


Mothers  of  Poets 

The  hours  for  what  they  are,  than  from  regard 
Glanced  on  their  promises  in  restless  pride. 
Such  was  she — not  from  faculties  more  strong 
Than  others  have,  but  from  the  times,  perhaps, 
And  spot  in  which  she  lived,  and  through  a  grace 
Of  modest  meekness,  simple-mindedness, 
A  heart  that  found  benignity  and  hope, 
Being  itself  benign.  ... 

There  is  a  certain  complacency  in  the 
passage,  characteristic  of  Wordsworth,  and 
perhaps  permissible  in  a  son  who  had  at 
the  time  of  writing  almost  reached  the  age  of 
his  dead  mother.  He  evidently  saw  in  her 
another  of  those  fine  serviceable  women  in 
whom  he  was  singularly  blessed. 

Keats'  mother  is  a  little  less  a  shadow. 
Her  husband,  Thomas  Keats,  died  when  the 
poet  was  nine,  and  she  married  again  in  the 
next  year,  but  separated  from  her  second  hus- 
band very  early  and  lived  with  her  mother 
and  her  children  until  her  death  by  a  con- 
sumption in  1810.  She  was  a  tall  woman 
with  ''a  large  oval  face  and  a  somewhat 
saturnine  demeanour,"  and  Keats  took  after 
his  father  in  physical  appearance.  Keats 
tended  her  in  her  sickness,  sitting  up  all 
night  with  her,  reading  novels  to  her,  and 
allowing  nobody  else  to  give  her  medicine 
or  cook  her  food,  and  when  she  died  he  hid 
himself  "  for  several  days  "  under  his  school- 
master's desk,  and  gave  way  to  his  grief. 

133 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

^  Family  affection  was  strong  in  those  of 
Keats*  blood,  and  could  not  but  have  owed 
much  to  the  mother.  It  had  little  enough 
to  do  in  appearance  with  John  Keats'  poetry, 
but  it  nourished  the  soil  out  of  which  it 
grew.  The  chief  influences  of  our  lives  are 
unconscious,  just  as  the  best  of  our  best  work 
is  ;  and  the  influence  of  the  mother  upon  the 
poet  is  mainly  unconscious  even  when  she  is 
a  woman  of  intelligence  as  well  as  power  and 
sense  like  Lady  Mary  Sidney  or  Magdalen 
Herbert,  perhaps  not  less  so  than  when  she 
is  a  woman  of  altogether  traditional  wisdom 
like  Anne  Wordsworth,  or  of  conspicuous 
conventions  and  inarticulate  character  like 
Mary  Shelley  or  Mrs.  Landor. 


134 


chapter  Seven:  Poets  and  Friendly 
Women 

THE  earliest  poetry  of  men  of  our 
country  suggests  the  influence  of 
women  at  many  points.  Women 
stand  for  home,  peace,  and  the  arts  and  graces 
of  peace,  in  the  fighting  ages.j  When  Beowulf 
comes  to  the  land  of  Hrothgar,  King  of  the 
East  Danes,  to  rid  him  of  the  demon  Grendel, 
the  Queen  Wealtheow  takes  the  cup  round  the 
Hall  at  the  welcoming.  She  is  noble  minded, 
with  many  gold  rings,  and  first  she  gives  the 
cup  to  her  lord,  and  next  to  Beowulf.  She  is 
as  a  queen  ought  to  be,  light  of  heart,  good 
in  counsel  with  her  lord,  and  liberal  in  gifts 
of  horses  and  treasures.  She  is  there  at  the 
thanksgiving  to  God  and  Beowulf  when 
Grendel  is  slain,  when  Hrothgar  stands  at 
the  entrance  porch  of  his  hall  and  praises 
Beowulf,  saying  that  if  his  mother  is  yet  alive 
she  may  well  say  that  God  was  '*  gracious  to 
her  in  her  childbearing."  Again  Waltheow 
bears  the  cup ;  she  speaks  in  the  full  hall  a 
speech  of  policy,  and  gives  Beowulf  two  arm- 
lets, a  mantle,  rings,  and  a  famous  collar  of 
twisted  gold,  bidding  him  prosper  and  care  . 
for  her  sons  in  her  court  where  the  nobles  are 
true  to  one  another  and  to  their  lord,  and 
where  the  warriors  do  her  bidding.     When 

135 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

he  returns  to  the  country  of  the  Goths,  their 
Queen  Hygd,  *'  the  peace  bond  of  the  peoples," 
goes  up  and  down  the  hall  cheering  the  young 
men  with  wine  from  the  studded  treasure-cup 
while  Beowulf  tells  his  adventures ;  for  she 
also  though  very  young  was  wise,  well  grown, 
and  generous.  And  Beowulf  gives  her  the 
gifts  of  Hrothgar,  a  curiously-wrought  neck 
ring,  and  three  horses  with  bright  saddles. 
That  the  woman  had  it  in  her  power  to  be 
other  than  meekly  gracious  is  evident  from 
the  story  of  the  Queen  Thrytho  and  her 
pride  and  violence,  so  terrible  that  no  warrior 
except  her  lord  dared  look  into  her  eyes  by 
day,  and  regardless  of  the  fact  that  it  is  not 
queenly  for  a  woman,  however  mighty,  to 
compass  the  death  of  a  man  who  insults  her. 
She  lived  afterwards  to  be  as  famous  for  her 
good  as  for  her  violence,  and  loved  her  lord, 
Offa,  King  of  the  Angles. 

A  later  poem,  the  '*  Husband^s  Message," 
is  of  a  man  dwelling  in  exile  who  sends  his 
wife  a  message  on  a  wooden  tablet,  asking 
her  to  come  to  him,  as  soon  as  the  cuckoo 
sings  in  the  wood,  to  heal  his  longing.  For 
he  is  now  in  good  estate  and  in  high  honour, 
and  without  her.  *'  The  Wife's  Complaint " 
is  of  a  woman  deserted  by  her  suspicious 
husband.  He  is  beyond  the  sea,  and  she 
alone,  living  in  the  woods  without  friends  or 
136 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

friendliness.  She  asks  for  his  love  again, 
which  was  once  so  strong,  and  thinks  that  he 
also  may  remember  their  home  and  their 
union.  -.,    .  . 

With  the  advanceof  civilisation  and  security) 
the  power  of  the  home  andof  woman  increased.' 
But  it  is  long  before  we  have  any  positive 
witness  to  the  home-life  of  an  English  poet, 
though  nearly  all  of  the  English  poets  have 
married,  and  many  of  them  at  an  early  age, 
perhaps  to  spite  Schopenhauer,  who  said  that 
celibacy  was  best  for  poets,  because  married 
life  was  against  creative  work.  Chaucer's  was 
probably  unhappy,  and  he  has  left  pictures 
of  the  love,  lust,  playfulness,  and  worldli- 
ness,  but  hardly  of  the  homeliness  of  women 
unless  in  the  story  of  patient  Griselda,  though 
he  said  that  there  were  a  thousand  good 
women  to  one  bad,  and  apologised  for  telling 
coarse  tales  before  women. 

Mary  Herbert,  Countess  of  Pembroke, 
Sidney's  sister,  and  about  six  years  his  junior, 
is  one  of  the  first  female  relatives  of  a  poet 
whom  we  know  something  like  well.  She 
married  at  sixteen,  and  Sidney  was  often  and 
long  with  her  in  her  home  at  Wilton.  She 
worked  with  him  at  a  translation  of  the 
Psalms,  and  J.  A.  Symonds  thought  her  part, 
probably  all  but  the  first  forty-two  Psalms, 
the  better  in  that  unsuccessful  toil.     It  was 

137 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

probably  begun  during  Sidney's  visit  of  1580. 
But  this  was  far  more  remarkable  for  the 
beginning  of  Sidney's  **  Arcadia  " — '*  The 
Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia"  as  it  is 
always  called,  for  a  reason  which  Sidney's 
dedication  to  his  ''dear  lady  and  sister"  best 
describes  : 

**  You  desired  me,"  he  writes,  "  to  do  it,  and  your 
desire  to  my  heart  is  an  absolute  commandment. 
Now  it  is  done  only  for  you,  only  to  you :  if  you 
keep  it  to  yourself,  or  commend  it  to  such  friends 
who  will  weigh  errors  in  the  balance  of  goodwill,  I 
hope,  for  the  father's  sake,  it  will  be  pardoned,  per- 
chance, made  much  of,  though  in  itself  it  have 
deformities.  For  indeed,  for  severer  eyes  it  is  not, 
being  but  a  trifle,  and  that  triflingly  handled.  Your 
dear  self  can  best  witness  the  manner,  being  done 
in  loose  sheets  of  paper,  most  of  it  in  your  presence  ; 
the  rest  by  sheets  sent  unto  you,  as  fast  as  they 
were  done.  .  .  ." 

A  longer  labour  of  love  there  never  was, 
and  to  read  it  requires  probably  a  longer,  and 
means  the  death  of  love.  The  sister  revised 
it  and  added  to  it  before  its  publication  in 
1590,  four  years  after  Sidney's  death.  Her 
own  work  proves  her  perhaps  her  brother's 
equal,  except  in  inspiration.  She  was  a 
woman  of  vigorous  and  original  character, 
witty  and  beautiful,  resembling  Sir  Philip, 
with  '*  a  pretty  sharp-oval  face"  and  hair  **of 
a  reddish-yellow."     Aubrey  says  that  she  had 

138 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

many  gallants,  and  that  "  she  was  very  sala- 
cious, and  she  had  a  contrivance  that  in  the 
spring  of  the  year  .  .  .  the  stallions  .  .  . 
were  to  be  brought  before  such  a  part  of  the 
house,  where  she  had  a  vidette  to  look  on 
them."  He  says  that  Wilton  House  in  her 
time  was  ''like  a  College,  there  were  so  many 
learned  and  ingenious  persons."  She  was  a 
patroness  of  poets,  and  mother  of  William 
Herbert,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  and  on  her  death 
in  1 62 1  she  gained  from  pastoral  William 
Browne  the  most  famous  of  poetic  epitaphs, 
as  ''  Sidney  s  sister,  Pembroke's  mother." 

Sidney's  wife,  Frances  Walsingham,  did 
not  count  for  much  by  comparison  with  the 
Countess  of  Pembroke  and  Penelope  Rich, 
the  *'  Stella  "  of  his  sonnets.  He  married  her 
in  1583,  the  match  pleased  the  two  families, 
and  he  may  well  have  been  attracted  to  the 
personal  beauty  which  procured  her  as  second 
husband  the  Earl  of  Essex,  and  after  his 
execution,  Lord  Clanricarde  as  a  third.  She 
bore  him  a  daughter  during  their  union  of 
three  years,  but  he  was  writing  sonnets  to  the 
wife  of  Lord  Rich,  and  it  is  not  probable  that 
he  loved  Frances  Sidney.  The  only  manner 
in  which  she  can  have  affected  his  poetry 
was  by  doubling  the  barrier  which  stood 
between  him  and  Stella  and  so  adding  to  the 
cause  of  the  sonnets. 

139 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Unlike  Sidney,  Spenser  was  able  to  marry 
the  lady  who  is  usually  said  to  be  the  lady  of 
his  sonnets,  in  1594.  She  was  Elizabeth  Boyle, 
of  whom  nothing  is  known  except  that  she  bore 
Spenser  two  children  and  married  a  second 
husband  after  his  death.  Mr.  J.  C.  Smith  is 
inclined  to  trace  to  the  courtship  and  early 
wedded  life  the  noticeably  increased  strength 
and  beauty  of  those  portions  of  the  ''  Faerie 
Queene  "  probably  written  in  1593-5,  namely. 
Books  V.  and  VI.  He  also  suggests  that  these 
books  were  written  when  Spenser  was  a  father 
because  of  the  simile  of  the  nurse  and  infant, 
Calepine's  treatment  of  the  foundling,  and  so 
on.  Spenser's  wife  is  said  to  be  the  ''  country 
lass"  of  "The  Faerie  Queene,"  VI.  10,  she 
who — 

So  far  as  doth  the  daughter  of  the  day 
All  other  lesser  lights  in  light  excel, 
So  far  doth  she  in  beautiful  array, 
Above  all  other  lasses  bear  the  bell, 
No  less  in  virtue  that  beseems  her  well, 
Doth  she  exceed  the  rest  of  all  her  race. 
For  which  the  Graces  that  here  wont  to  dwell, 
Have  for  more  honour  brought  her  to  this  place, 
And  graced  her  so  much  to  be  another  Grace. 

There  seems  no  reason,  however,  why  a  man 
of  Spenser's  facility  in  poetry  and  in  love 
should  not  have  written  so  about  any  beautiful 
woman  whom  he  wished  to  compliment  at  the 
140 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

time.  ''Country  lass"  may  mean  no  more 
than  ''shepherdess."  Writing  of  this  kind 
means  that  the  woman  had,  or  appeared  to  the 
poet  to  have,  little  in  her,  or  he  would  have 
been  able  to  distinguish  her,  or  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  her,  from  any  other.  "The  artist," 
says  Coleridge,  "  must  imitate  that  which  is 
within  the  thing,  that  which  is  active  through 
form  and  figure,  and  discourses  to  us  by 
symbols.  .  .  .  This  explains  why  the  likeness 
of  a  very  good  portrait  is  not  always  recog- 
nised ;  because  some  persons  never  abstract, 
and  amongst  these  are  especially  to  be  num- 
bered the  near  relatives  and  friends  of  the  sub- 
ject, in  consequence  of  the  constant  pressure 
and  check  exercised  on  their  minds  by  the 
actual  presence  of  the  original."  There  are 
no  musts  in  art,  but  only  an  infinite  may ; 
yet  if  Spenser  imitated  what  was  within  this 
"  country  lass  "  there  was  not  much.  This 
passage,  like  so  much  early  poetry  written  at 
an  age  when  women  grew  more  rapidly  old, 
and  depended  for  their  power  over  man  mainly 
on  their  virgin  beauty,  reflects  chiefly  the 
amorous  stir  in  the  lover  and  is  entirely 
egotistical.  The  same  must  be  said  of  the 
"Amoretti,"  the  love  sonnets  to  Elizabeth 
Boyle  ;  it  has,  however,  to  be  tempered  by 
the  facts,  first,  that  a  very  young  girl  is  likely 
to  be  colourless,  and  secondly,  that  Spenser 

141 


Feminine   Influence  on  the  Poets 

was  writing  according  to  poetical  tradition. 
The  sonnets  were  perhaps  sent  to  her  ;  at  least 
the  leaves  on  which  they  were  written  were 
addressed  : 

Happy,  ye  leaves !  when  as  those  lily  hands, 
Which  hold  my  life  in  their  dead-doing  might, 
Shall  handle  you,  and  hold  in  love's  soft  bands, 
Like  captives  trembling  at  the  victor's  might. 

They  were  said  to  be  inspired  by  her,  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  essential  truth 
of  the  sextet  of  the  eighth  : 

You  frame  my  thoughts  and  fashion  me  within  ; 
You  stop  my  tongue,  and  teach  my  heart  to  speak  ; 
You  calm  the  storm  that  passion  did  begin, 
Strong  through  your  cause,  but  by  your  virtue 
weak. 
Dark  is  the  world,   where  your   light   shined 

never: 
Well  is  he  born,  that  may  behold  you  ever. 

How  much  is  poetical  tradition  and  how  much 
individual  feeling  cannot  be  discriminated  in 
any  of  them,  but  "Coming  to  kiss  her  lips," 
e,g,  with  its  list  of  her  physical  charms  and 
their  fragrances,  her  eyes  ''  like  pinks  but 
newly  spread,"  her  bosom  ''  like  a  strawberry- 
bed,"  is  presumably  all  artifice  in  the  taste  of 
the  age,  though  perhaps  inspired  by  the  girl's 
own  ''  sweet  odour"  that  *'  did  them  all  excel." 
The  sonnets  most  pleasant  to  read  are  those 
142 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

which  have  some  other  interest  than  this 
conceited  amorousness,  as  for  example  *'  Like 
as  a  huntsman,'\with  its  charming  simile  for 
her  wildness — she  is  like  the  deer  that  comes  to 
drink  at  the  brook  where  the  tired  and  baffled 
huntsman  lies,  and  does  not  seek  to  fly  but 
lets  him  take  her  by  hand.  The  phrase  at  the 
end  of  *' Lacking  in  love"  is  perhaps  signifi- 
cant of  the  self-absorbed  nature  of  Spenser's 
love : 

Cease  then,  mine  eyes,  to  seek  her  self  to  see  ; 
And  let  my  thoughts  behold  her  self  in  me. 

She  supplied  the  impulse  to  use  the  material 
and  colouring  in  just  this  way.  But  the 
**  Epithalamion  "  is  the  greatest  compliment 
of  all  to  Spenser's  bride,  that  she  could  un- 
loose and  guide  a  rapture  of  such  exuberant 
and  yet  perfectly  controlled  loveliness.  It  is 
mere  vanity  to  say  a  word  about  the  standards 
of  an  age  that  made  this  glorious  poem  pos- 
sible. Nevertheless,  if  passages  like  that 
where  the  bride  blushes  at  the  altar,  with  eyes 
cast  down, 

Governed  with  goodly  modesty, 
That  suffers  not  one  look  to  glance  away 
Which  may  let  in  a  little  thought  unsound, 

— if  this  were  true,  the  woman  was  scarce  more 
than  a  piece  of  exquisite  flesh  which  stung 

143 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Spenser  to  excellent  results.  But  this  would 
make  the  wonder  of  the  poem  too  incredible 
since  flesh  alone  can  but  move  flesh,  and  even 
flesh  daunted  and  denied  could  not  turn  inward 
and  produce  the  "  Epithalamion."  The  hope 
of  an  heir  gives  it  further  dignity  and  reminds 
us  yet  again  that  the  age  was  one  far  from  ours. 
It  was  in  fact  an  age  that  dared  to  consider  the 
flesh  more  than  we  have  done  until  recent 
years.  Nor  does  our  theology  and  cosmogony 
matter  when  the  fire  of  poetry  consumes  an 
old  theology  and  cosmogony  in  the  service  of 
love's  truth — in  the  final  stanza : 

And  ye  bright  heavens,  the  temple  of  the  gods, 

In  which  a  thousand  torches  flaming  bright 

Do  burn,  that  to  us  wretched  earthly  clods 

In  dreadful  darkness  lend  desired  light ; 

And  all  ye  powers  which  in  the  same  remain, 

More  than  we  men  can  fain ! 

Pour  out  your  blessing  on  us  plenteously. 

And  happy  influence  on  us  rain, 

That  we  may  raise  a  large  posterity. 

Which  from  the  earth,  which  they  may  long 

possess 
With  lasting  happiness, 
Up  to  your  haughty  palaces  may  mount, 
And  for  the  guerdon  of  their  glorious  merit, 
May  heavenly  tabernacles  there  inherit. 
Of  blessed  Saints  for  to  increase  the  count. 
So  let  us  rest,  sweet  love,  in  hope  of  this, 
And  cease  till  then  our  timely  joys  to  sing: 
The  woods  no  more  us  answer,  nor  our  echo 


ring! 


144 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

So  much,  perhaps,  must  be  attributed  to  the 
inspiration  of  his  love  as  may  account  for  the 
difference  between  this  *' Epithalamion''  of 
1594  and  the  noble  '*  Prothalamion  "  of  1596 
written  for  the  marriage  of  the  Earl  of 
Worcester's  two  daughters,  who  were  nothing 
to  him.  The  '*  Epithalamion  ''  is  the  finest 
of  Spenser's  work,  having  all  the  sensuous- 
ness  of  the  best  parts  of  *'  The  Faerie  Queene  " 
together  with  an  impulse  which  that  poem 
usually  lacks ;  the  '*  Prothalamion "  has 
everything  but  this  annealing  impulse. 

Donne's  wife  is,  perhaps,  the  most  famous 
of  all  poets'  wives.  He  married  her  secretly 
in  1 60 1  when  he  was  twenty-eight,  and  had 
spent  his  youth  possibly  in  licentiousness, 
and  certainly  in  writing  love  poetry  which  is 
often  licentious.  For  a  time  the  excess  of 
passion  perhaps  dulled  his  fire,  but  such  was 
her  power  and  their  love  that  after  the  union 
he  wrote  several  of  his  finest  poems  to  her. 
Walton  tells  a  story  of  how  he  had  a  vision 
of  her  when  he  was  abroad  in  161 1  and  161 2 
against  her  will,  and  she  lay  in  childbed  in 
England.  *'  I  have  seen,"  he  told  his  com- 
panion, ''  I  have  seen  my  dead  wife  pass 
twice  by  me  through  this  room,  with  her  hair 
hanging  about  her  shoulders,  and  a  dead 
child  in  her  arms."  There  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  this  vision  though   the  account  of 

K  145 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

the  circumstances  may  be  erroneous  or  in- 
complete. Mrs.  Donne  had  a  "  divining  soul," 
and  Walton  compares  the  sympathy  between 
them  to  that  of  two  lutes,  which  ''being  both 
strung  and  tuned  to  an  equal  pitch,  and  then 
one  played  upon,  the  other  that  is  not 
touched  being  laid  upon  a  table  at  a  fit 
distance,  will  (like  an  echo  to  a  trumpet) 
warble  a  faint  inaudible  harmony  in  answer 
to  the  same  tune."  In  the  beautiful  ''  Elegy 
on  his  mistress  "  Donne  bade  her  stay  safe  in 
England  while  he  went  abroad  (probably  in 
1606,  thinks  Mr.  Gosse),  and  in  fancying 
what  anxiety  might  create  in  her  imagination 
thus  concluded : 

When  I  am  gone,  dream  me  some  happiness  ; 
Nor  let  thy  looks  our  long-hid  love  confess  : 
Nor  praise,  nor  dispraise  me,  nor  bless  nor  curse 
Openly  love's  force,  nor  in  bed  fright  thy  nurse 
With  midnight's  startings,  crying  out,  O  !  O  ! 
Nurse,  O  !  my  love  is  slain  ;  I  saw  him  go 
O'er  the  white  Alps  alone  ;  I  saw  him,  I, 
Assail'd,  fight,  taken,  stabb'd,  bleed,  fall,  and  die. 
Augur  me  better  chance,  except  dread  Jove 
Think  it  enough  for  me  to  have  had  thy  love. 

Mrs.  Donne,  then  twenty-one  years  old,  had 
apparently  wished  to  come  with  him  and  had 
offered  to  dress  as  a  page  so  as  to  be  as 
little  encumbrance  as  possible.  Mr.  E.  K. 
Chambers  refers  to  the  same  occasion  the 
song  beginning  : 
146 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

Sweetest  love,  I  do  not  go, 

For  weariness  of  thee, 
Nor  in  hope  the  world  can  show 
A  fitter  love  for  me  ; 
But  since  that  I 
At  the  last  must  part,  'tis  best, 
Thus  to  use  myself  in  jest 

By  feigned  deaths  to  die. 

It  was  Donne's  distinction  to  be  the  first"^ 
after  Shakespeare,  and  almost  at  the  same 
time  as  Shakespeare,  to  w^rite  love  poems  in 
English  which  bear  the  undeniable  signs  not 
only  of  love  but  one  moment  of  love  and 
for  one  particular  woman.  His  poems  to  his 
wife  are  of  the  same  kind.  There  is  none  of 
the  old-fashioned  generalisation  in  them  at 
all. 

The  married  life  of  the  Donnes  was  one 
of  great  misery.  They  married  against  her 
father's  wish,  though  there  had  been  "so 
much  of  promise  and  contract  as,  without 
violence  to  conscience,  might  not  be  shaken." 
They  *'  adventured  equally "  knowing  their 
obligations,  said  Donne.  The  father,  Sir 
George  More,  was  furiously  angry :  ''I 
humbly  beg  you,"  wrote  Donne,  '*  that  she 
may  not,  to  her  danger,  feel  the  terror  of 
your  sudden  anger."  By  his  action,  Donne 
was  dismissed  from  his  place  as  secretary  to 
her  uncle,  Sir  Thomas  Egerton,  the  Lord- 
Keeper.     Donne  was  ill  and  in  despair  and 

H7 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

for  a  short  time  in  prison,  for  the  marriage 
was  an  offence  against  the  Canon  and  the 
Common  Law.  Gradually  the  father  relented, 
and  the  marriage  was  confirmed  by  the  Court 
of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury;  but  not  until 
1608  did  he  allow  them  adequate  means  of 
support.  Donne  and  his  wife  stayed  with  a 
cousin  at  Pirford  from  1602  to  1604.  Two 
children  were  born  in  those  years.  A  third 
followed  in  1605,  and  they  then  settled  at 
Mitcham.  Mrs.  Donne  continued  to  bear 
children  in  poverty  to  a  perplexed  and 
unhappy  husband,  who  wrote  during  her 
dangerous  travail  in  1607  ^hat  it  was  the 
worst  night  he  had  ever  spent,  and  had  she 
died  he  could  not  but  have  joined  her  in  death. 
In  the  spring  of  1608  he  saw  everything 
revive,  but  himself  withering  and  growing 
"  older  and  not  better."  He  would  not  yet 
accept  the  advice  to  enter  the  church.  He 
was  in  a  small  house,  writing  close  to  three 
gamesome  children  and  to  the  wife  from 
whom  he  had  to  conceal  his  wretchedness. 
His  wretchedness  in  this  "  hospital "  of  home 
with  wife  and  children  was  as  complete  as 
the  peasant  John  Clare's,  who  wept  bitterly 
at  the  birth  of  his  seventh  child  and  ran  out 
into  the  fields,  not  to  return  until  he  was 
brought  back  insensible  the  next  night  and 
for  weeks  unable  to  leave  bed.  Again  in 
148 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

1608  Mrs.  Donne  was  expecting  to  have  a 
child,  but  she  and  all  the  children  fell  ill  and 
they  ''  lost  half  a  child "  ;  he  alone  was 
well,  but  so  poor  that  if  the  sick  children 
died  he  knew  not  how  to  pay  for  their  burial ; 
he  flattered  himself  with  the  hope  that  he 
also  was  dying.  He  wrote  *'  Biathanatos " 
defending  self-homicide,  and  was  comforted 
to  know  that  he  had  ''  the  keys  of  his  prison 
in  his  own  hand."  At  last  came  the  pro- 
vision of  about  ;^8oo  a  year  (of  our  money) 
from  Sir  George  More. 

Mrs.  Donne  lost  two,  perhaps  three,  children, 
and  bore  one,  in  1614.  Money  had  not  done 
everything.  Donne's  Muse,  he  said,  was 
dead,  though  he  had  begun  writing  on  the 
death  of  Elizabeth  Drury  in  1610,  and  com- 
posed in  1613  an  epithalamium  for  Lord 
Rochester  and  Frances  Howard  (then  still 
the  wife  of  the  Earl  of  Essex).  He  got  no 
appointment  in  return,  and  was  unable  to 
choose  between  the  Church  and  the  Law, 
which  was  Rochester's  suggestion.  His  one 
consolation  was  his  wife,  and  though  he  said 
at  one  moment  that  he  was  none  the  less 
alone  for  being  in  the  midst  of  his  family,  yet 
he  said  at  another  that  what  company  he 
could  give  her  she  should  have — *'  we  had 
not  one  another  at  so  cheap  a  rate,  as  that  we 
should  ever  be  weary  of  one  another  " — for  he 

i49 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

had  the  relief  of  books  from  solitariness,  but 
she  had  none. 

He  was  ordained  and  made  chaplain  to 
James  I.  in  1615,  the  year  of  his  eleventh 
child's  birth.  161 6  gave  him  two  Rectories 
and  the  Divinity  Readership  at  Lincoln's 
Inn,  where  he  preached  some  of  his  great 
sermons.  In  the  next  year  his  wife  died  at 
the  birth  of  her  twelfth  child,  stillborn.  She 
left  seven  alive,  and  Donne  promised  them 
never  to  marry  again,  *'  burying  with  his  tears 
all  his  earthly  joys  in  his  most  dear  and 
deserving  wife's  grave."  These  seventeen 
years  of  marriage  were  years  of  love,  but  also 
of  agony  and  preparation.  In  poetry  they 
produced  most  if  not  all  of  the  epistles,  the 
poems  on  Elizabeth  Drury,  and  the  few 
poems  to  his  wufe.  But  they  meant  every- 
thing to  him  as  a  divine.  Only  such  a 
passion  as  that  for  Anne  More  could  have 
kept  him  to  poverty  and  the  wilderness  all 
those  years.  And  such  a  passion  and  such 
suffering  produced  from  Donne's  sensuous 
and  sensual  nature  the  holy  flowers  of  the 
sermons  and  the  divine  poems. 

It  does  not  appear  that  Edward  Herbert 
was  much  influenced  by  the  wife  whom  he 
married  to  please  two  families,  at  fourteen. 
She  bore  him  children  and  he  was  faithful 
to  her  for  ten  years,  he  says,  that  is  until  he 
150 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

went  abroad  and  she  refused  to  follow  him. 
His  brother,  George  Herbert,  married  Jane 
Danvers  at  thirty-five,  only  three  days  after 
his  first  interview  with  her,  according  to 
Walton.  She  had  fallen  in  love  with  him 
before  seeing  him.  She  made  a  humble  and 
devoted  parson's  wife  during  the  five  years 
remaining  to  him,  and  married  again,  being 
childless,  after  six  years  of  widowhood.  The 
marriage,  in  1629,  followed  four  years  after 
the  destruction  of  his  court  hopes  and  his 
resolve  to  enter  the  Church.  Only  a  few 
months  passed  before  Herbert  received  the 
Rectory  which  settled  him  at  Bemerton,  the 
scene  of  his  most  admired  activities  as  saint 
and  country  parson.  Probably  "  The  Temple  " 
was  written  there  when  his  chief  company 
was  his  wife.  As  a  youth  of  seventeen  he 
had  dedicated  to  God  instead  of  to  Venus 
his  poetic  gifts.  His  divine  poems  show  a 
love  of  God  and  of  holy  things  that  has  a 
married  sobriety  rather  than  the  rapture  of 
courtship,  such  as  may  be  found  in  Crashaw 
and  Vaughan.  His  view  of  human  marriage 
itself  may  perhaps  be  gathered  from  the 
words  of  ''  The  Church  Porch  "  : 

Abstain  wholly,  or  wed.     Thy  bounteous  Lord 
Allows  thee  choice  of  paths  :  take  no  by-ways  ; 
But  gladly  welcome  what  he  doth  afford  ; 
Not  grudging,  that  thy  lust  hath  bounds  and  stays. 

151 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Continence  hath  his  joy  :  weigh  both  ;  and  so 
If  rottenness  have  more,  let  Heaven  go. 

He  w^ished  to  deny  to  mortal  love  the  sole 
praise  of  stimulating  the  heart  and  brain 
of  a  man  to  ''  invention,"  and  it  was  in 
deliberate  competition  with  mortal  love- 
poetry  that  he  wrote  the  divine  poems.  But 
it  will  happen  that  his  best  verses  are  full  of 
colour  gained  from  the  stores  of  amorous 
poetry.     He  asks  the  question  : 

Is  it  no  verse,  except  enchanted  groves 

And  sudden  arbours  shadow  coarse-spun  lines  ? 

And  in  **  I  envy,'*  he  says  : 

I  envy  no  man's  nightingale  or  spring  ; 
Nor  let  them  punish  me  with  loss  of  rhyme, 
Who  plainly  say.  My  God^  My  King. 

But  when  he  praises  *'  Church-music,"  it  is 
for  all  the  world  like  a  mortal  lover,  and  the 
beautiful  *' sweet  day,  so  cool,  so  calm,  so 
bright "  has  to  call  upon  the  comparison  of  a 
bridal  in  its  first  verse.  It  was,  according  to 
**The  Pearl,"  in  spite  of  his  senses  that  he 
felt  heavenly  love,  and  that  poem  would  have 
been  nothing  but  for  the  sensuousness  which 
it  professes  to  immolate  : 

I  know  the  ways  of  pleasure,  the  sweet  strains. 
The  lullings  and  the  relishes  of  it ; 
The  propositions  of  hot  blood  and  brains  ; 
What  mirth  and  music  mean  ;  what  love  and  wit 

152 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

Have  done  these  twenty  hundred  years  and  more  : 
I  know  the  projects  of  unbridled  store  : 
My  stuff  is  flesh,  not  brass  ;  my  senses  live, 
And  grumble  oft,  that  they  have  more  in  me 
Than  he  that  curbs  them,  being  one  to  five  : 
Yet  I  love  thee. 

With  his  own  consumptive  body  and  his  re- 
ligious wife  he  was  able  to  look  abroad  upon 
youth  and  the  flesh  with  some  degree  of  com- 
fort in  his  contempt.  Still  he  cannot  but  use 
the  language  of  earthly  for  heavenly  things, 
calling  the  words  *'  My  Master,"  for  example, 
a  ''broth  of  smells  that  feeds  and  fats  my 
mind."  In  one  poem  he  consciously  parodies 
a  love-song  of  Donne's — ''Soul's  joy,  now  I 
am  gone  " — to  make  a  song  for  his  God.  He 
uses,  too,  with  much  cunning,  the  profane 
poet's  plea,  that  he  would  write  better  if  he 
felt  less  deeply,  for  he  says : 

Verses,  ye  are  too  fine  a  thing,  too  wise 
For  my  rough  sorrows :  cease,  be  dumb  and 

mute, 
Give  up  your  feet  and  running  to  mine  eyes. 
And  keep  your  measures  for  some  lover's  lute. 
Whose  grief  allows  him  music  and  a  rhyme  : 
For  mine  excludes  both  measure,  tune  and  time. 

Alas,  my  God  ! 

It  is  hard  not  to  believe  that  the  sober  grief, 
the  sober  joy,  the  mild  retrospection,  of  the 
poems   in    "The   Temple"  were   nursed   by 

153 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

the  laborious  ease  of  his  life  as  saint  and 
childless  husband  at  Bemerton. 

Milton,  as  every  one  knows,  married  three 
times.  His  wife  was  seventeen  and  he  thirty- 
four  when  he  married  first.  The  marriage 
was  made  early  in  the  Civil  War,  in  1643, 
and  Mary  Powell  was  of  a  Royalist  family. 
It  was  and  remains  something  of  a  mystery : 
"  he  took  a  journey  into  the  country,  nobody 
about  him  certainly  knowing  the  reason,  or  that 
it  was  any  more  than  a  journey  of  recreation  ; 
but  home  he  returns  a  married  man  that  went 
out  a  bachelor  "  a  month  before.  The  bride 
found  an  excuse  in  a  few  weeks  for  leaving 
Milton  and  *'  a  philosophical  life  "  which  was 
so  unsuited  to  a  country  cavalier's  daughter 
of  an  *'  unliveliness  and  natural  sloth  unfit 
for  conversation."  Home  she  went  and  left 
Milton  to  write  ''  The  Doctrine  and  Discipline 
of  Divorce,"  whether  inspired  by  her  possible 
refusal  to  consummate  the  marriage  or  not, 
cannot  be  known.  She  did  not  return,  in 
spite  of  Milton's  demands,  for  two  years,  and 
in  the  interval  he  was  attempting  an  illegal  if 
decorous  union  with  the  handsome  and  witty 
daughter  of  a  Dr.  Davis.  Miss  Davis  did 
not  care  for  the  proposal.  After  his  wife's 
desertion  in  1643  he  had  also  had  the  society 
of  a  woman  at  the  house  of  Captain  Hobson. 
His  wife.  Lady  Margaret  Ley,  ''  daughter  of 
154 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

that  good  earl,  once  President  of  England's 
Council  and  her  Treasury/'  the  '*  honoured 
Margaret  "  of  that  sonnet,  was  **  a  woman  of 
wit  and  ingenuity"  whom  he  was  glad  to 
converse  with  in  the  evenings.  His  wife 
Mary  was  then,  in  1645,  unexpectedly  intro- 
duced into  Milton's  company,  and  fell  at  his 
feet  asking  forgiveness.  This  he  gave,  and 
in  the  next  year  she  bore  him  the  first  of  four 
children,  dying  herself  at  the  birth  of  the 
fourth  in  1652,  the  year  when  Milton's  blind- 
ness became  complete.  Mark  Pattison  saw  in 
Mrs.  Milton's  pleading  the  model  for  the 
scene  in  '*  Paradise  Lost,"  where 

Eve  with  tears  that  ceas'd  not  flowing 
And  tresses  all  disordered,  at  his  feet 
Fell  humble,  and  embracing  them,  besought 
His  peace.  ' 

At  the  end  of  1646  he  wrote  a  sonnet  on 
**  the  religious  memory  of  Mrs.  Catherine 
Thomson,  my  Christian  friend,"  which  tells 
us  all  that  is  known  of  her,  unless  she  be- 
longed to  the  family  with  whom  he  afterwards 
lodged  at  Charing  Cross. 

Milton  did  not  marry  again  until  1656,  but 
before  this  he  found  intelligent  and  cultivated 
converse  with  the  mother  of  one  of  his  pupils, 
Lady  Ranelagh,  Robert  Boyle's  sister.  Hers 
was  **  the  one  acquaintance  which  was  worth 

155 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

to  him  all  the  rest."  In  1658  the  second  Mrs. 
Milton,  Catharine  Woodcock,  died  in  child- 
bed. She  is  only  known  to  us  through  the 
sonnet  beginning  **  Methought  I  saw  my  late 
espoused  saint."  But  except  for  a  few  son- 
nets the  period  between  his  first  marriage  and 
the  death  of  his  second  wife  was  not  one  of 
poetical  creation,  though  this  is  to  be  attri- 
buted not  to  married  life  but  to  his  self  dedi- 
cation to  the  cause  of  Liberty.  1658  was  the 
year  when  ''  Paradise  Lost "  was  effectively 
begun.  It  was  finished  before  his  third 
marriage. 

At  the  death  of  his  second  wife  Milton  had 
three  daughters  under  twelve  years  old,  the 
eldest  of  them  deformed.  After  this  they  had 
a  governess,  but  they  learnt  little  and  were 
neglected,  so  that  only  the  two  younger  could 
write,  and  that  badly.  They  were  taught, 
however,  to  read  foreign  languages,  which 
they  did  not  understand,  and  in  revenge  they 
sold  some  of  their  father's  books  behind  his 
back. 

There  was  no  friendliness  between  father 
and  children,  and  when  one  of  them  heard  of 
his  coming  marriage  she  said  ''that  was  no 
news,  but,  if  she  could  hear  of  their  death, 
that  was  something."  She  was  able  to  show 
that  one  tongue  was  enough  for  a  woman,  as 
Milton  had  said. 

156 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

The  wife  Milton  married  in  1663,  partly 
that  he  might  have  a  housekeeper,  was 
Elizabeth  Minshull,  aged  twenty-four.  She 
was  an  active  and  capable  woman,  devoted  to 
his  well-being,  and  providing  him  **  such 
dishes  as  I  think  fit."  She  had  also  a  good 
enough  voice,  though  no  ear,  to  give  him 
some  recreation  by  her  singing.  She  it  was 
who  arranged  for  the  daughters  to  leave  the 
house  and  learn  embroidery. 

The  view  of  women  expressed  in  Milton's 
poems  is  due  at  least  as  much  to  his  proud 
temper  as  to  his  own  unfortunate  first 
marriage.  Adam  is  made  for  *'  God  only," 
Eve  ''for  God  in  him,"  and  she  addresses 
him  as  "  O  thou  for  whom  and  from  whom 
.  .  .  and  without  whom  [I]  am  to  no  end," 
and  admits  :  ''  God  is  thy  law,  thou  mine." 
Adam  is  indeed  'Mess  fair"  but  then  "beauty 
is  excelled  by  manly  grace."  When  she  sees 
Adam  and  Raphael  "entering  on  thoughts 
abstruse  "  she  goes  off  to  the  flowers. 

Yet  went  she  not  as  not  with  such  discourse 

Delighted,  or  not  capable  her  ear 

Of  what  was  high.     Such  pleasure  she  reserved, 

Adam  relating,  she  sole  auditress. 

.  .  .   He,  she  knew,  would  intermix 

Grateful  digressions,  and  solve  high  dispute 

With  conjugal  caresses. 

We   may  conclude  from  this,  because  it   is 

157 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

not  alone,  that  the  submissive  beauty  of 
a  woman  made  a  very  strong  appeal  to 
Milton,  her 

Too  much  of  ornament,  in  outward  show, 
Elaborate,  of  inward  less  exact. 

Even  the  lofty  **  Wisdom  in  discourse  with 
her  loses  discountenanc'd,  and  like  folly 
shows,"  the  highest  praise  to  the  instinctive 
wisdom  of  women,  loses  by  being  in  part  an 
amorous  compliment,  due  to  the  ''  transport " 
of  passion;  and  the  angel  bids  him,  *'with 
contracted  brow,"  not  to  be  diffident  of 
wisdom,  to  value  himself,  and  so 

The  more  she  will  acknowledge  thee  her  head 
And  to  realities  yields  all  her  shows. 

In  the  same  passage  the  Angel  ^distinguishes 
the  body  from  true  love  in  a  manner  charac- 
teristic of  both  sensualist  and  ascetic,  Milton 
being  both : 

But,  if  his  sense  of  touch,  whereby  mankind 
Is  propagated,  seem  such  dear  delight 
Beyond  all  other,  think  the  same  voutsafed 
To  cattle  and  each  beast ;  which  would  not  be 
To  them  made  common  and  divulged,  if  aught 
Therein  enjoyed  were  worthy  to  subdue 
The  soul  of  Man,  or  passion  in  him  move. 
What  higher  in  her  society  thou  find  st 
Attractive,  human,  rational,  love  still  : 
In  loving  thou  dost  well ;  in  passion  not. 
Wherein  true  Love  consists  not, 

158 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

Milton  was  not  beyond  his  age  in  equalling 
the  sense  of  touch  with  passion,  and  con- 
demns his  Puritanism  out  of  his  own  mouth. 
Eve,  it  may  be  remembered,  suggests  that  she 
and  Adam  should  do  their  gardening  apart, 
as  *'  looks  intervene  and  smiles  or  object  new 
casual  discourse  draw  on."  Milton  insists 
much  upon  the  *' naked  beauty"  of  Eve, 
**  undecked  save  with  herself"  and  '*  no 
veil  she  needed,  virtue  proof,"  and  ''  Eve 
ministered  naked."  He  is  also  fond  of 
pointing  out  that  she  felt  no  **  dishonest 
shame,"  and  that  '*  no  thought  inferior  altered 
her  cheek,"  that ''  Love  unlibidinous  reigned," 
that  she  received  Adam's  courtship  with 
''  innocence  and  virgin  modesty " — phrases 
which  seem  to  show  that  the  opposite  was  in 
his  mind,  and  at  least  have  the  effect  of 
suggesting  the  opposite  to  the  reader  ;  the 
poet  himself  is,  as  it  were,  a  seventeenth- 
century  intruder  upon  the  scene,  and  really 
gives  some  indecency  to  the  nakedness. 
This  must  remind  us  of  '*  Comus,"  where 
the  benighted  Lady  talks  of  her  safeguards, 
conscience,  etc.,  and  the  *' unblemished  form 
of  Chastity."  This  is  all  the  more  remark- 
able because  the  part  of  the  Lady  was 
written  for  the  Lady  Alice  Egerton,  a  child 
of  thirteen.  Mr.  Greg  condemns  Milton  for 
*'  passages    of    smug    self-conceit    upon    a 

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Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

subject  whose  deHcacy  he  was  apparently 
incapable  of  appreciating/*  and  putting  them 
into  the  mouth  of  a  child,  "  thereby  out- 
raging at  once  the  innocence  of  childhood 
and  the  reticence  of  youth,"  making  her  reply 
to  the  tempting  Comus  : 

Thou  hast  nor  ear,  nor  soul,  to  apprehend 
The  sublime  notion  and  high  mystery 
That  must  be  uttered  to  unfold  the  sage 
And  serious  doctrine  of  Virginity. 

Not  less  extraordinary  is  the  elder  brother's 
speech : 

But  Beauty,  like  the  fair  Hesperian  tree 
Laden  with  blooming  gold,  had  need  the  guard 
Of  dragon  watch  with  unenchanted  eye 
To  save  her  blossoms,  and  defend  her  fruit 
From  the  rash  hand  of  bold  incontinence. 
You  may  as  well  spread  out  the  unsunned  heaps 
Of  miser's  treasure  by  an  outlaw's  den 
And  tell  me  it  is  safe,  as  bid  me  hope 
Danger  will  wink  on  opportunity, 
And  let  a  single  helpless  maiden  pass 
Uninjured  in  this  wild  surrounding  waste. 

From  which  we  are  forced  to  conclude  that 
either  Milton  or  his  age  saw  virginity  as 
a  valuable  possession  in  itself  which  was 
constantly  imperilled  by  fraud  and  force,  and 
consciously  preserved  against  them. 

By  his  design  or  not,  Milton's  Eve  shows 
a  quicker  and  more  human  mind  than  his 
1 60 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

Adam.  Eve  it  is  who  sees  that  their 
circumscribed  life  is  poor.  ''  How  are  we 
happy  still  in  fearing  harm  ?  "  she  asks  ;  and 
''What  is  faith,  love,  virtue,  unassayed?'' 
Her  reply  to  the  serpent's  flattery  is,  perhaps, 
too  clever  and  tolerant : 

Serpent,  thy  overpraising  leaves  in  doubt 
The  virtue  of  that  fruit,  in  thee  first  proved. 

She  perceives  that  ''such  prohibitions  bind 
not "  when  they  are  aimed  against  wisdom. 
She  jumps  rapidly  from 

Was  I  to  have  never  parted  from  thy  side  ? 
As  good  have  grown  there  still,  a  lifeless  rib — 

to 

Being  as  I  am,  why  didst  not  thou,  the  head, 
Command  me  absolutely  not  to  go  ? 

Her  most  powerful  thought  of  all  is  not  to 
be  equalled  or  paralleled  in  the  whole  poem. 
She  says  to  Adam  : 

In  thy  power 
It  lies,  yet  ere  conception,  to  prevent 
The  race  unblest,  to  being  yet  unbegot. 
Childless  thou  art ;  childless  remain.     So  death 
Shall  be  deceived  his  glut,  and  with  us  two 
Be  forced  to  satisfy  his  ravenous  maw. 
But  if  thou  judge  it  hard  and  difficult, 
Conversing,  looking,  loving,  to  abstain 
From  love's  due  rites,  nuptial  embraces  sweet, 
And  with  desire  to  languish  without  hope, 

L  l6l 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Then,  both  our  selves  and  seed  at  once  to  free 
From  what  we  fear  for  both,  let  us  make  short : 
Let  us  seek  Death,  or,  he  not  found,  supply 
With  our  own  hands  his  office  on  ourselves. 

The  suggestion  could  not  be  addressed  with- 
out irony  to  one  so  inflammable  as  Adam. 
His  suggestion  is  different ;  for  he  asks  w^hy 
God  did  not  make  men  *'as  angels,  without 
feminine  "  or,  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  desired, 
find  **  some  other  way  to  generate  mankind." 
When  Michael  tells  them  that  they  must 
leave  Paradise,  Adam  says : 

But  prayer  against  his  absolute  decree 

No  more  avails  than  breath  against  the  wind. 

Eve*s  contrasting  attitude  is  characteristic. 
She  is  in  hiding  through  Michael's  speech, 
but  breaks  into  audible  lament  and  regret : 

O  flowers 
That  never  will  in  other  climate  grow. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  Eve  says  nothing 
against  the  male  sex,  while  Adam  wretchedly 
foresees  the  calamity  to  men,  human  life, 
and  household  peace,  through  female  snares 
**  and  straight  conjunction  with  this  sex." 
**  Samson  Agonistes "  also  takes  this  pro- 
verbial attitude,  the  chorus  saying  : 

Wisest  men 
Have  erred  and  by  bad  women  been  deceived. 

162 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

Dalilah,  like  Eve,  reproaches  the  man : 

Nor  shouldst  thou  have  trusted  that  to  woman's 
frailty. 

The  chorus  sings  that  woman's  love  is  not 
won  or  kept  by  virtue,  wisdom,  valour,  wit, 
strength,  comeliness  of  shape,  or  amplest 
merit ;  she  who  seemed  modest ''  under  virgin 
veil "  proves  contrary  in  marriage ;  and 
therefore — 

God's  universal  law 

Gave  to  the  man  despotic  power 

Over  his  female  in  due  awe. 

The  influence  of  particular  women  is  not 
easy  to  trace  in  Milton,  except  where  he 
acknowledges  it  by  such  a  sonnet  as  that  to 
Lady  Margaret  Ley.  But  the  influence  of 
the  physical  beauty  and  spiritual  tenderness 
of  women,  and  of  his  first  wife's  unruliness, 
is  conspicuous  in  nearly  all  his  poetry.  He 
sought  female  society  for  pleasure  and  serious 
converse  all  through  middle  age,  though  it 
is  possible  that  ''the  lady  of  Christ's,"  as  he 
was  called  at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
owed  less  to  any  women  he  may  have  met  in 
his  early  manhood  than  to  his  own  sensuous 
temperament  casually  stirred  by  the  thought 
or  the  presence  of  the  other  sex.  His  youth- 
ful verses  upon  a  woman  seen  by  chance 
and   only  once  in  a  spring  walk  have  been 

163 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

mentioned.  When  he  was  in  Italy  at  the 
age  of  thirty  he  was  moved  by  **  one  of  the 
finest  voices  of  the  world,"  Leonora  Baroni, 
to  address  her  in  Latin,  paying  her  graceful 
compliments,  saying,  for  example,  that  if  God 
be  in  all  things  and  diffused  over  all,  in 
her  alone  does  He  speak  ;  and  that  another 
Leonora  drove  Tasso  mad  for  love,  but  this 
one  could  have  restored  him  to  himself  by 
breathing  peace  into  his  breast  with  her  soul- 
moving  voice.  He  also  wrote  five  Italian 
sonnets  and  a  canzone  to  an  Italian  lady, 
probably  not  Leonora,  though  she  charmed 
him  by  her  voice,  as  well  as  her  grace  and 
her  black-eyed  and  dark-haired  beauty.  But 
sooner  or  later  there  must  have  come  a 
certain  awkwardness  in  regarding  the  physical 
side  of  women,  if  we  may  draw  any  conclusion 
from  the  slightly  grotesque  and  monstrous 
impression  made  by  Eve  and  in  a  less  degree 
by  Adam  in  ''  Paradise  Lost,"  as  if  they  were 
half  marble  and  half  flesh,  and  in  any  case 
imperfectly  visualised  and  resting  too  much 
upon  the  traditional  or  conventional  view.^ 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Cowper  felt  pro- 
foundly the  sight  of  his  mother  s  picture  over 
half  a  century  after  her  death,  since  women 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  meant  so 
much  to  him.  Most  of  his  friends  were 
women,  and  they  were  the  most  intimate  and 
164 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

most  constant  of  his  friends.  His  letter  of 
1790  to  Mrs.  Bodham  reminds  her  of  the 
cousinly  affection  between  them  when  he 
used  to  stay  at  Catfield  Rectory,  and  how  he 
and  Harriet  made  the  parsonage  ring  with 
laughter ;  how  her  sister,  Elizabeth  Donne,  was 
his  playfellow  at  his  own  home,  the  Berk- 
hampstead  Rectory.  His  letter  began  :  ''  My 
dearest  Rose — whom  I  thought  withered  and 
fallen  from  the  stalk,  but  whom  I  find  still 
live,"  and  went  on,  *'  I  loved  you  dearly,  when 
you  were  a  child,  and  love  not  a  jot  the  less 
for  having  ceased  to  be  so."  And  there  is 
little  doubt  that  he  had  much  of  that  kind 
of  diffused  sentiment,  always  ready  to  be  re- 
awakened, which  is  commoner  among  women 
than  men.  At  Catfield  also  he  sometimes 
saw  his  cousin,  Theodora  Cowper,  to  whom 
he  made  love  when  he  was  articled  to  an 
attorney  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  She  and 
Harriet,  afterwards  Lady  Hesketh,  spent  their 
days  with  him  in  giggling  and  making 
giggle.  She  was  the  ''Delia"  of  his  early 
love-poems,  some  of  them  written  at  Catfield 
in  1752  when  he  was  twenty-one.  Another  is 
dated  1755.  But  her  father  would  not  allow 
the  cousins  to  marry.  At  this  time  Cowper 
wrote  a  Latin  thesis,  never  yet  published,  to 
prove  marriage  lawful  between  cousins,  but 
in   vain.      It   has   been   suggested   that    he 

165 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

fell  in  love  again  in  1758,  because  he  wrote  a 
lively  Latin  epistle  in  that  year  about  a  pretty 
girl  at  Greenwich.  Mr.  J.  C.  Bailey  thinks 
the  language  that  of  "the  Latin  exercise 
writer,  not  of  the  lover,"  which  is  not  con- 
clusive, while  his  other  argument  against  the 
suggestion,  that  the  girl  ''  was  only  sixteen,"  i 
is  of  no  weight  at  all.  Theodora  Cowper  ^ 
remained  unmarried,  preserved  the  poems 
addressed  to  her,  and  was  always  the  poet's 
friend.  When  he  was  in  danger  of  losing 
the  family  allowance,  on  account  of  his 
extravagance,  after  his  madness  of  1763,  an 
anonymous  letter  from  one  who  **  loved  me 
tenderly  and  approved  my  conduct,"  told  him 
that  the  full  amount  would  be  made  up  by 
the  writer  ;  and  this  must  have  been  Theodora. 
Twenty  years  later  he  tells  Lady  Hesketh  of 
an  anonymous  letter — not  the  first — making 
him  a  present  of  an  annuity  of  jf^^o  a  year, 
and  of  a  parcel  containing  a  tortoiseshell 
snuff-box,  *'with  a  beautiful  landscape  on  the 
lid  of  it,  glazed  with  crystal."  He  made  no 
guess  at  the  sender,  but  was  content  to  ask 
God  to  ''bless  him." 

Theodora's  sister,  Harriet,  who  became 
Lady  Hesketh,  was  a  correspondent  of  Cowper 
until  he  came  under  the  grim  religious  influ- 
ence of  Newton.  In  1763  he  had  wondered 
how  the  deuce  it  had  happened  he  was  never 
166 


Poets  and   Friendly  Women 

in  love  with  her,  much  as  he  loved  her. 
After  his  madness,  in  1765,  he  remembered 
how  he  had  not  recognised  her — *'  the  only 
instance  in  which  I  knew  not  how  to  value 
your  company  was  when  I  was  not  in  my 
senses."  Her  reading  of  **  John  Gilpin " 
revived  their  friendship.  In  October  1785 
she  wrote  to  him,  and  he  replied  on  the  same 
day,  renewing  their  relationship  without  an 
effort  and  with  nothing  but  pleasure,  remind- 
ing her  of  their  country  walks  and  their 
laughter  at  the  ''Arabian  Nights"  together. 
Next  February  he  is  expecting  her  June 
visit,  and  has  been  preparing  everything, 
down  to  the  furniture  of  her  bed  : 

It  is,  I  assure  you,  superb,  of  printed  cotton,  and 
the  subject  classical.  Every  morning  you  will  open 
your  eyes  on  Phaeton  kneeling  to  Apollo,  and  im- 
ploring his  father  to  grant  him  the  conduct  of  his 
chariot  for  a  day.  May  your  sleep  be  as  sound  as 
your  bed  will  be  sumptuous,  and  your  nights  at 
least  will  be  well  provided  for. 

Now  again  he  writes  to  her  as  before  about 
everything,  people  and  places,  body  and  mind 
and  spirit,  his  stomach,  his  dumb-bells,  the 
religious  ass  Teedon.  The  eighteen  years* 
interval  does  not  count  now  as  an  interval. 
He  discusses  Pope's  ''Homer"  with  her — 
she  still  likes  some  passages  ;  and  she  it  was 
who  did  most  to  advertise  his  own  translation. 

167 


Feminine  Influence  on  the   Poets 

He  thanks  her  for  oysters.  The  mornings 
set  apart  for  writing  to  her  are  hoHday 
mornings:  he  ''converses"  with  her.  He 
thinks  her  letters  the  best  in  the  world.  She 
says  he  flatters  her :  but  ''  No,  my  cousin,  I 
did  not  flatter  you,  neither  do  I  now,  when  I 
tell  you  that  I  never  could  find  an  oppor- 
tunity." He  promises  not  to  be  too  agitated 
— not  to  die — in  the  excitement  of  her 
arrival.  He  has  moved  into  his  summer 
house  with  a  window  on  to  the  orchard 
through  which  he  will  often  see  her  pass,  "  and 
which  therefore  I  already  prefer  to  all  the 
orchards  in  the  world."  He  sends  a  man  to 
meet  her  at  Newport  Pagnell.  His  name  is 
Kitchener,  *'  Kitch  "  for  short,  and  he  wears 
a  blue  coat : 

The  first  man,  therefore,  you  shall  see  in  a  blue 
coat  with  white  buttons,  in  the  famous  town  of  New- 
port, cry  "  Kitch  !  "  He  will  immediately  answer, 
**My  Lady ! "  and  from  that  moment  you  are  sure 
not  to  be  lost. 

There  was  no  disappointment.  His  dear 
cousin's  arrival,  he  tells  a  friend,  made  them 
happier  than  they  ever  were  at  Olney.  ''  She 
pleased  everybody,  and  was  pleased  in  her 
turn  with  everything  she  found ;  was  always 
cheerful  and  sweet-tempered,  and  knew  no 
pleasure  equal  to  that  of  communicating 
pleasure  to  all  around  her." 
i68 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

"  I  am  fond,"  he  says,  '*  of  the  sound  of  bells,  but 
was  never  more  pleased  with  those  of  Olney  than 
when  they  rang  her  into  her  new  habitation." 

She  interrupts  the  routine,  but  is  so  anxious 
for  his  success  that  she  will  not  let  him  play 
truant  from  his  proper  business.  Through 
her  he  made  friends  in  the  neighbourhood. 
His  mind  grew  easy  and  happy,  and  he  wrote 
*'The  Lily  and  the  Rose" — of  the  lily  and 
the  rose  contending  in  a  lady's  cheeks — 
explaining : 

In  general  I  believe,  there  is  no  man  who  has 
less  to  do  with  the  ladies'  cheeks  than  I  have.  I 
suppose  it  would  be  best  to  antedate  it,  and  to 
imagine  that  it  was  written  20  yrs.  ago,  for  my 
mind  was  never  more  in  a  trifling,  butterfly  trim 
than  when  I  composed  it,  even  in  the  earliest  parts 
of  my  life. 

She  was  the  good  angel  who  stooped  to  the 
swamp  of  Olney  and  lifted  the  household  to 
the  height  of  Weston  Underwood.  He  wrote 
nearly  always  for  his  own  pleasure,  once  or 
twice  out  of  duty,  but  always  to  please  her. 
He  was  indebted  to  her  besides  for  many 
oysters  and  much  brawn,  and  for  two  dozen  of 
excellent  Madeira.  She  asks  for  verses,  but 
*' Homer"  takes  all  his  time,  except  that  a 
thought  sometimes  strikes  him  before  he  rises, 
and  if  it  runs  readily  into  verse  and  he  can 

169 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

finish  it  at  once  he  does.  '*  Am  I  not  happier," 
he  asks  her,  ''than  ever  poet  was,  in  having 
thee  for  my  cousin?"  He  sends  her  his 
''  Gratitude  *'  for  a  tasselled  cap,  an  artful 
**  studying  chair,"  carpets,  movable  shelves, 
and  china  : 

All  these  are  not  half  that  I  owe 

To  one,  from  our  earliest  youth 
To  me  ever  ready  to  show 

Benignity,  friendship  and  truth  ; 
For  time,  the  destroyer  declared 

And  foe  of  our  perishing  kind, 
If  even  her  face  he  has  spared, 

Much  less  could  he  alter  her  mind. 

As  late  as  1792  she  could  make  him  laugh 
heartily  by  her  droll  and  humorous  way  of 
expressing  her  hate  of  the  French  at  the 
Revolution.  He  wrote  to  her  out  of  the 
abyss  of  his  wretchedness  in  1795,  no  longer 
able  to  call  himself  ''  affectionately  yours  " 
because  all  affection  has  forsaken  him — he 
who  is  like  the  **  solitary  pillar  of  rock  that 
the  crumbling  cliff  has  left  at  the  high-water 
mark."  Each  letter  is  now  his  last.  He 
will  never  see  her  again,  nor  Weston. 
His  despair  multiplies  itself.  Even  in  1797 
she  is  willing  to  come  and  take  charge  of 
him,  though  herself  only  convalescent  at 
Cheltenham.  In  1798  she  describes  delight- 
ful scenes,  but,  he  says,  *'  to  one  who  if  he 
170 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

even  saw  them  could  receive  no  delight  from 
them — who  has  a  faint  recollection  that  once 
he  was  susceptible  of  pleasure  from  such 
causes."  He  died  in  1800,  in  nothing  more 
miserable  than  in  his  loss  of  power  to  con- 
verse with  his  cheerful  cousin.  She  survived 
him  seven  years. 

Less  of  a  friend  and  more  of  a  lover,  but 
still  a  very  inspiriting  friend  for  a  whole 
year,  was  Lady  Austen,  widow  of  Sir  Robert 
Austen.  Cowper  was  pleased  with  the  sight 
of  her  going  into  a  shop  as  he  looked  out  of 
his  window  at  Olney.  In  July  1781  he  had 
been  called  on  and  had  returned  the  call, 
to  find  her  ''a  lively  agreeable  woman;  has 
seen  much  of  the  world,  and  accounts  it  a 
great  simpleton,  as  it  is.  She  laughs  and 
makes  laugh,  and  keeps  up  a  conversation 
without  seeming  to  labour  it."  She  had 
''  fallen  in  love  with "  Cowper  and  Mrs. 
Unwin ;  he  was  able  to  spend  a  whole  day 
''  without  one  cross  occurrence  or  the  least 
weariness  to  each  other " ;  and  he  saw  in 
her  coming  "  strong  marks  of  providential 
interposition."  She  broke  down  the  wall 
that  had  shut  out  the  world,  and  shut  in 
Cowper  and  a  few  intimates,  since  his  mad- 
ness. In  her  company  his  mind  recovered 
some  spring.  He  wrote  to  her  of  the  rapidly 
made  friendship : 

171 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

But  who  can  tell  how  vast  the  plan 

Which  this  day's  incident  began  ?  .  .  . 

A  transient  visit  intervening 

And  made  almost  without  a  meaning, 

(Hardly  the  effect  of  inclination, 

Much  less  of  pleasing  expectation). 

Produced  a  friendship  then  begun, 

That  has  cemented  us  in  one ; 

And  placed  it  in  our  power  to  prove 

By  long  fidelity  and  love, 

That  Solomon  has  wisely  spoken  ; 

**  A  threefold  cord  is  not  soon  broken." 

She  settled  in  the  Vicarage,  and  a  private  way 
connected  the  gardens  of  the  tw^o  houses. 
She  gave  up  the  world  and  Cowper  gave  up 
his  hermitage.  In  a  wet  August  he  longed 
for  '^Sister  Anne": 

With  charitable  mind  to  drag 
My  mind  out  of  its  proper  quag. 

They  passed  their  days  alternately  at  each 
other  s  house : 

In  the  morning  I  walk  with  one  or  other  of  the 
ladies,  and  in  the  evening  wind  thread.  Thus  did 
Hercules,  and  thus  probably  did  Samson,  and  thus 
do  I  ;  and  were  both  those  heroes  living,  I  should 
not  fear  to  challenge  them  for  a  trial  of  skill  in  that 
business,  or  doubt  to  beat  them  both. 

After  his  morning  visit  to  Lady  Austen  he 
walked ;  returned  and  dressed  :  then  dined 
with  her  and  ''  parted  not  till  between  ten  and 
172 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

eleven  at  night."  There  had  early  been  a 
difference  with  her  ;  it  seemed  to  Cowper  that 
her  vivacity  was  exhausting,  and  that  he  had 
done  ill  to  disturb  his  silent  retirement  ;  but 
three  pairs  of  worked  ruffles  came  from  Lady 
Austen,  and  they  were  reconciled.  She  told 
him  the  story  of  John  Gilpin  and  the  poem 
on  that  subject  is  characteristic  of  the  bright- 
ness which  she  encouraged.  '*  On  the  Loss  of 
the  Royal  George  "  was  written  by  her  desire, 
because  she  wanted  words  to  a  tune.  He 
wrote  the  *'  Song  on  Peace  "  upon  a  sentiment 
given  by  her,  and  the  song  to  the  air  of  ''  The 
Lass  of  Pattie's  Mill  "  at  her  request.  Above 
all,  she  gave  him  the  sofa  for  a  subject,  and 
so  started  him  upon  *'  The  Task."  Later,  he 
complained  that  her  exacting  friendship  left 
him  no  time  to  write,  and  **  I  was  forced  to 
neglect  *  The  Task '  to  attend  upon  the  Muse 
who  had  inspired  the  subject."  He  could 
sometimes  only  find  time  for  three  lines  at  a 
sitting.  She  was  also  in  some  sort  responsible, 
for  Cowper  s  *'  Homer,"  because  he  was 
reading  Pope's  to  her  with  much  discontent, 
whereupon  she  advised  him  to  write  the 
translation  which  he  desired.  Mr.  J.  C. 
Bailey  has  also  shown  that  she  may  have 
influenced  his  later  satires.  *'  Conversation  " 
was  begun  at  the  time  of  their  first  meeting  : 
''  Retirement,"  the  last  of  them,  was  **  in  a 

173 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

very  special  sense,  at  that  moment,  Lady 
Austen's,"  says  Mr.  Bailey,  because  she  had 
just  then  come  into  the  country  for  retire- 
ment ;  its  tone  also  is  less  morose,  and  the 
feeling  for  Nature  less  purely  religious.  It 
is  not  easy  to  say  how  Cowper  would  have 
defined  his  friendship  for  her  at  any  particular 
moment.  Possibly  his  friendship  for  Mrs. 
Unwin  was  so  deep  and  secure  that  it  gave 
him  a  freedom  in  forming  other  connections 
which  not  every  one  would  understand.  He 
was  not  tied  to  Mrs.  Unwin  either  by  mar- 
riage or  by  cohabitation,  but  he  treated  the 
bond  between  them  as  reverently  as  if  he 
were  ;  or  rather  took  it  as  a  matter  of  course  ; 
and  he  failed  to  see  that  not  every  one  could  be 
expected  to  know  this.  At  any  rate,  Lady  Aus- 
ten wore  a  lock  of  his  hair  set  with  diamonds, 
and  he  wrote  the  following  verses  for  her : 

The  star  that  beams  on  Anna's  breast 

Conceals  her  William's  hair  ; 
*Twas  lately  severed  from  the  rest 

To  be  promoted  there. 

The  heart  that  beats  beneath  that  breast 

Is  William  s  well  I  know, 
A  nobler  prize  and  richer  far 

Than  India  could  bestow. 

She  thus  his  favoured  lock  prefers 

To  make  her  William  shine  ; 
The  ornament  indeed  is  hers, 

But  all  the  honour  mine. 

174 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

This  may  have  seemed  a  gay  trifle  of  friend- 
ship to  the  playful  versifier  of  fifty,  but  almost 
certainly  not  to  Lady  Austen.  In  1784 
Cowper  found  her  in  love  with  him,  and  he 
wrote  a  letter  which  she  burnt  in  her  anger  at 
finding  that  he  had  been  unmoved.  Cowper 
told  Lady  Hesketh  in  1786  that  she  left  on 
account  of  her  health  a  short  time  before  he 
finished  **  The  Task,"  but  the  reason  appears 
to  have  been  that  friendly  relations  could  not 
easily  have  been  made  to  grow  over  Lady 
Austen's  passionate  declaration,  whatever  it 
was. 

Cowper's  longest  and  most  intimate  and 
continuous  friendship  was  with  Mary  Unwin. 
Soon  after  leaving  the  madhouse  in  1765  he 
went  to  live  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Unwin,  a 
retired  clergyman  at  Huntingdon.  In  October 
he  had  met  Mrs.  Unwin  in  the  street  and 
gone  home  with  her  and  walked  with  her  for 
near  two  hours  talking  in  her  garden.  She 
suppressed  the  solitude  and  melancholy  of 
his  mind,  and  he  felt  that  she  was  such  an  one 
as  he  had  earnestly  hoped  he  might  meet 
when  he  got  free.  In  1767  Mr.  Unwin  fell 
from  his  horse  and  died,  and  Cowper  and 
Mrs.  Unwin  settled  together  at  Olney.  She 
was  seven  years  older  than  he,  and  Cowper 
compares  their  relation  to  that  of  mother  and 
son.     Nevertheless  they  thought  of  marriage, 

175 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

''  possibly,"  says  Goldwin  Smith,  "  as  a  pro- 
pitiation to  the  evil  tongues  which  did  not 
spare  this  most  innocent  connexion "  ;  but 
Cowper  fell  ill  again,  and  they  were  never 
married.  She  became  inevitable  and  essential 
to  Cowper.  They  had  a  perfect  understanding 
and  were  never  separated.  She  did  half  his 
living  for  him.  During  his  illness  of  1773 
he  says  : 

At  the  same  time  that  I  was  convinced  of  Mrs. 
Unwin's  aversion  to  me,  I  could  endure  no  other  com- 
panion. The  whole  management  of  me  consequently 
devolved  upon  her,  and  a  terrible  task  she  had ;  she 
performed  it,  however,  with  a  cheerfulness  hardly 
ever  equalled  on  such  an  occasion  ;  and  I  have  often 
heard  her  say  that  if  ever  she  praised  God  in  her 
life  it  was  when  she  found  that  she  was  to  have  all 
the  labour.  She  performed  it  accordingly,  but,  as 
I  hinted  once  before,  very  much  to  the  hurt  of  her 
own  constitution. 

She  made  his  caudle  and  his  tincture,  being 
*'  more  exact  than  the  apothecaries."  When 
he  recovered  and  began  writing  verses  as  an 
amusement,  she  suggested  that  he  should 
write  a  moral  satire  on  *'  The  Progress  of 
Error,"  which  accordingly  he  did.  She  and 
he  submitted  together  to  the  religious  in- 
fluence of  Newton  ;  without  her  he  must  have 
suffered  more  from  it  than  he  did.  She,  he 
once  said,  speaking  of  his  translation  of  the 
*'  Iliad,"  "  has  been  my  touchstone  always, 
176 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

and  without  reference  to  her  taste  and  judg- 
ment I  have  printed  nothing."  The  last  lines 
of  ''  The  Task  "  attribute  to  ''  the  fair  "  Lady 
Austen  the  inspiration,  but  apparently  the 
serious  and  wide  roving  digressions  to  Mrs. 
Unwin,  ''  whom  flowers  alone  I  knew  would 
little  please."     Lady  Hesketh  described  her  : 

She  is  very  far  from  grave ;  on  the  contrary  she 
is  cheerful  and  gay,  and  laughs  de  bon  coeur  upon 
the  smallest  provocation.  Amidst  all  the  puritanical 
words  which  fall  from  her  de  temps  en  temps,  she 
seems  to  have  by  nature  a  quiet  fund  of  gaiety  ;  great 
indeed  must  it  have  been,  not  to  have  been  wholly 
overcome  by  the  close  confinement  in  which  she  has 
lived,  and  the  anxiety  she  must  have  undergone  for 
one  whom  she  certainly  loves  as  well  as  one  human 
being  can  love  another.  I  will  not  say  she  idolises 
him,  because  that  she  would  think  wrong ;  but  she 
certainly  seems  to  possess  the  truest  regard  and 
affection  for  this  excellent  creature,  and,  as  I  said 
before,  has  in  the  most  literal  sense  of  those  words, 
no  will  or  shadow  of  inclination  but  what  is  his. 

He  calls  her  in  *'  The  Task  "  his 

Dear  companion  of  my  walks 
Whose  arm  this  twentieth  winter  I  perceive 
Fast  lock'd  in  mine,  with  pleasure  such  as  love, 
Confirm'd  by  long  experience  of  thy  worth 
And  well-tried  virtues,  could  alone  inspire. 

When  she  was  ill  and  Cowper  more  ill,  in  the 
years  when  decay  began  to  end  their  happi- 
ness, it  was  proposed  that  it  would  do  him 

M  177 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

good  if  she  should  go  out  with  him :  she 
said  to  him  that  she  would  like  a  walk ;  he 
rose  at  once  and  offered  her  his  arm,  which 
she  took  and  so  they  went  out.  In  1792,  at 
her  second  paralytic  seizure,  Cowper  came  in 
to  Hayley  '*  with  a  countenance  of  absolute 
distraction,  saying  *  There  is  a  wall  of  separa- 
tion between  me  and  my  God/  "  ^  He  never 
complained  of  the  burden  which  she  became 
to  him  in  her  last  miserable  years.  When 
she  died  Cowper  could  only  cry  out  once  and 
never  spoke  of  her  again. 

The  two  poems  obviously  and  by  their 
subject  connected  with  Mary  Unwin  are  well 
known:  the  sonnet,  **To  Mrs.  Unwin"  and 
the  four  stanzas  ''To  Mary."  His  cry, 
''  Mary !  I  want  a  lyre  with  other  strings,'* 
does  but  anticipate  Browning  s  sense  of  lack 
in  ''One  word  more."  To  express  a  rela- 
tionship of  this  kind,  of  such  age  and  domestic 
intimacy,  is  impossible  in  any  words.  "  Deeds 
not  words  "  is  the  necessary  motto  of  every 
one,  whether  a  man  of  words  or  not,  in  the 
like  case,  and  the  sonnet  is  only  another  and 
original  variation  upon  the  poet's  familiar 
contempt  for  words,  which  Sidney  expressed 
in  his  "  Muses,  I  oft  invoked  your  holy  aid,'* 
with  its : 

*  Edward  Dowden's  "Essays  Modern  and  Eliza- 
bethan." 

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Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

But  now  I  mean  no  more  your  help  to  try 
Nor  other  sugring  of  my  speech  to  prove, 
But  on  her  name  incessantly  to  cry. 

The  knowledge  of  what  Mary  was  must  have 
made  any  verses  seem  **too  fine/'  too  sus- 
picious in  their  touch  of  courtliness  and  cere- 
mony. Nevertheless,  the  stanzas  '*  To  Mary  " 
succeed  in  making  all  other  love-poems  seem 
airy,  fantastical,  and  written  not  so  much  for 
love  of  woman,  but  for  love  of  love.  Not 
only  Sidney  but  even  Wordsworth  is — for 
the  moment  only,  be  it  said — slight  and 
painted  beside  this  poem,  so  earthly  and 
homely  in  all  detail,  yet  in  sense  divine. 
Yet  it  is  a  triumph  of  art  in  that  it  does  not 
depend  for  its  singular  effect  upon  any  false 
touch  of  mere  nature ;  it  is  a  poem  perfectly 
complete  in  itself,  and  not  only  when  fitted 
into  its  context  of  Cowper's  life. 

Mr.   J.  C.  Bailey  is  probably  the  first  to 
suggest  that  the  tenth  stanza — 

And  then  I  feel  that  still  I  hold 
A  richer  store  ten  thousand  fold 
Than  misers  fancy  in  their  gold, 
My  Mary ! 

— always  omitted  since,  was  deleted  by  Hay- 
ley,  lest  Theodora  Cowper  should  see  '*this 
passionately  outspoken  stanza."  But  it  is 
surely  not  reasonable  to  suppose  that  a  loving 
woman  could  read  all  the  other  verses  through 

179 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

without  regretful  or  jealous  perturbation,  and 
give  way  at  this. 

Cowper^s  women,  as  may  be  seen,  were  all 
but  everything  to  him.  They  made  life  and 
his  work  possible  to  him.  He  became  very 
much  like  one  of  them  with  his  rebuke  to 
tobacco : 

Pernicious  weed  whose  scent  the  fair  annoys, 
Unfriendly  to  society's  chief  joys, 
Thy  worst  effect  is  banishing  for  hours 
The  sex  whose  presence  civilises  ours — 

and  his  tenderness  even  to  the  worm : 

I  would  not  enter  on  my  list  of  friends 
(Though  graced  with  polished  manners  and  fine 

sense, 
Yet  wanting  sensibiHty)  the  man 
Who  needlessly  sets  foot  upon  a  worm. 

In  his  poem  on  *'  Friendship  "  he  does  not 
mention  female  friends  and  even  calls  the  love 
of  woman  *'not  so  pure"  or  so  secure  as 
friendship.  But  this  comparison  is  not  with- 
out a  suspicion  of  conventionality,  perhaps 
of  the  Puritan's  low  opinion  of  women.  The 
'*  Valediction  '*  is  probably  truer  to  his  deepest 
thoughts  in  its  desire  for  a  retreat  from  the 
world  with  one  who  has  known  and  escaped 
mankind — 

With  him,  perhaps  with  her  (for  men  have  known 
No  firmer  friendships  than  the  fair  have  shown). 
Let  me  enjoy,  in  some  unthought-of  spot, 

1 80 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

All  former  friends  forgiven  and  forgot, 
Down  to  the  close  of  life's  fast  fading  scene, 
Union  of  hearts,  without  a  flaw  between. 

And  such  was  his  fortune.  He  does  not, 
indeed,  dwell  upon  the  physical  beauty  of 
women  either  in  his  verse  or  prose ;  and 
perhaps  the  one  romantic  touch  to  a  woman's 
portrait  in  his  work  is  the  comparison  of  the 
rustic  lass  to  *'the  fair  shepherdess  of  old 
romance."  But  he  did  not  confine  himself 
only  to  homely  intimacies.  Many  of  his 
lively  occasional  poems  were  inspired  by 
women  '*whom  man  was  born  to  please.'* 
We  have  to  thank  Mrs.  Newton  for — 

A  noble  theme  demands  a  noble  verse ; 

In  such  I  thank  you  for  your  fine  oysters  .  .  . 

and  Mrs.  King  (the  friend  of  his  brothers,  who 
was  made  one  of  his  by  *'  The  Task  ")  for  the 
poem  in  return  for  a  quilt : 

The  Bard  if  e'er  he  feel  at  all. 
Must  sure  be  quickened  by  a  call 

Both  on  his  heart  and  head, 
To  pay  with  tuneful  thanks  the  care 
And  kindness  of  a  lady  fair 

Who  deigns  to  deck  his  bed  .  .  . 

and  Miss  Stapleton,  afterwards  Mrs.  Courte- 
nay,  for  two  sprightly  pieces  addressed  to 
that  young  lady  who  sang  and  played  ''  like 
an  angel." 

i8i 


Feminine  Influence   on  the  Poets 

Mrs.    Blake   played   perfectly   the    typical 
minor  but  essential  part  in  her  life-long  com- 
panionship with  the  poet.    Catherine  Boucher 
of  Battersea,  was  a  ''  bright-eyed,  dark-haired 
brunette,  with  expressive  features  and  a  slim, 
graceful  form."     When  she  married  Blake  in 
1782,  she  was  twenty,  illiterate  and  unable 
to    write    her   name ;    he    was   twenty-four. 
Blake  had  been  walking  out  with  a  girl  who 
had  admirers  and  replied  to  his  complaint  with 
only  '*  Are  you  a  fool  ?  "  and  a  scornful  glance. 
This  cured  him  of  jealousy,  but  he  was  be- 
moaning his  fate  at  a  friend's  house  when  a 
girl  who  was  listening  said  she  pitied  him 
from  her  heart.     ''Do  you  pity  me?"  asked 
he.     And  her  '*  Yes  I  I  do,  most  sincerely," 
brought  out  at  once  his  enthusiastic  '*  Then 
I  love  you  for  that."    The  marriage  displeased 
Blake's   father,    and   the   two   began  house- 
keeping in  lodgings  in  Green  Street,  Leicester 
Square.     She  had  a  'Moving   loyal    nature, 
an  adaptive  open  mind,"  and  was  so  sympa- 
thetic that  she  imbibed  enough  of  his  very 
spirit   to   reflect   it   in   design   which  might 
almost  have  been  his  own.     When  he  dis- 
covered his  own  way  of  engraving  in  relief 
both  words  and  designs,  he  taught  her  to  take 
off  the  impressions  and  to  help  in  tinting 
them  ;  she  also  bound  them  in  boards.     He 
told  her  all  his  history,  and  she  knew  him 
182 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

perfectly ;  she  ''  learned  to  have  visions  "  like 
him,  and  would  kneel  down  with  him  to  pray 
for  a  return  of  the  visions  when  his  invention 
flagged.  She  was  a  good  cook  and  made  the 
money  go  far.  If  she  told  him  the  money 
was  running  short,  and  he  said  **  Damn  the 
money,  it's  always  the  money,"  she  corrected 
him  by  putting  empty  plates  on  the  table. 
For  years  he  himself  lit  the  morning  fire  and 
put  on  the  kettle  before  she  awoke,  but  she 
soon  wore  out  her  good  looks  though  not  her 
sense  and  affection,  nor  her  bright  eyes  and 
*'  good  expression,"  with  hard  work.  Blake 
was  **at  once  lover,  husband  and  child"  to 
his  wife,  who  had  no  other  child.  And  she 
was  an  adoring  mother.  Mr.  de  Selincourt 
thinks  that  her  submissiveness  foretold  *'  the 
less  desirable  elements  in  her  husband's 
mystical  scheme."  He  is  said  to  have  **learned 
from  the  Bible  that  wives  should  be  in 
common,"  and  he  treated  her  as  a  good 
master  used  to  treat  a  good  old-fashioned 
family  servant  of  the  indispensable  kind. 
But  why  the  slatternly  serviceable  wife  should 
have  encouraged  him  in  the  view — expressed, 
e.g.  in  Leutha's  words  :  *'  Like  sweet  perfumes 
I  stupefied  the  masculine  perceptions  and 
kept  only  the  feminine  awake" — it  is  not 
easy  to  see.  Mr.  de  Selincourt  himself  points 
out,  too,  that  Job's  wife  is  treated  throughout 

183 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

the  illustrations  to  the  book  of  "  Job  "  with 
"an  unfaltering  sympathy  and  devotion"  in 
return  for  **her  dumb  identification  of  her- 
self with  her  husband  in  his  sufferings."  And 
it  is  important  to  notice,  with  Mr.  Sampson, 
that  in  his  system  the  Emanation,  represent- 
ing *'  imagination  and  self-annihilation,"  is 
a  female,  while  the  spectre,  representing 
"  reason,  selfhood,  pride  and  self-righteous- 
ness," is  a  male,  and  that  Mary,  in  ''  Sweet 
Mary,  the  first  time  she  ever  was  there," 
according  to  Rossetti,  stands  for  *'the  poetic 
or  spiritual  mind  moving  unrecognised  and 
reviled  among  its  fellows."  In  his  last  days, 
in  1827,  he  suddenly  turned  to  his  wife, 
saying :  '*  Stay  !  keep  as  you  are  !  Vou  have 
been  ever  an  angel  to  me :  I  will  draw  you  !  " 
He  thereupon  did  **a  phrenzied  sketch  of 
some  power ;  highly  interesting,  but,"  says 
the  unpenetrating  narrator,  *'not  like."  At 
his  death  he  sang  songs  to  his  Maker  in  her 
presence,  telling  her,  **  My  beloved  !  they  are 
nof  mine','  and  promising  that  he  would 
always  be  near  to  take  care  of  her.  She 
always  spoke  of  him  afterwards  as  *'that 
wonderful  man,"  whose  spirit  was  still  with 
her. 

In  spite  of  his  belief  that  wives  should  be 
in  common,  and  his  alleged  threat  to  introduce 
another  wife  into  his  household,  Blake  saw 
184 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

little  of  any  other  woman  after  his  marriage. 
His  sister  lived  with  them  at  Felpham,  but 
it  is  said  that  wife  and  sister  did  not  agree. 
Mrs.  Blake  was  jealous  and  even  suspicious. 
For  a  short  time,  in  1783,  Blake  was  welcomed 
by  the  Bluestockings  at  Mrs.  Matthews'  in 
Rathbone  Place.  Her  admiration  was  at  least 
the  immediate  cause  of  the  publication  of  his 
*' Poetical  Sketches  "in  1783.  But  his ''unbend- 
ing deportment "  made  him  uncongenial,  and 
in  return  it  is  surmised  that  *'An  Island 
in  the  Moon  "  was  a  loose  satire  upon  that 
company.  This  never  yet  printed  satire 
was  not  fitted  for  their  eyes  with  its  address 
to  women : 

Hail  finger-footed  lovely  Creatures  ! 
The  females  of  our  human  natures, 
Formed  to  suckle  all  Mankind, 
Tis  you  that  come  in  time  of  need, 
Without  you  we  should  never  breed, 
Or  any  Comfort  find — 

and  to  Matrimony : 

Then  come,  ye  maidens !  come  ye  swains ! 
Come  and  be  cur^d  of  your  pains 
In  Matrimony's  Golden  cage. 

Most  of  Blake's  writing  about  women  could 
probably  be  traced  to  the  free  working  of  his 
own  mind  rather  than  to  experience  and 
observation.     In  a  poem  written,  it  is  said, 

185 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

before  he  was  fourteen,  he  sang  of  love,  of  his 
childish  freedom,  and  then  his  entanglement 
in  Love — 

He  caught  me  in  his  silken  net 
And  shut  me  in  his  golden  cage  ; 

and  his  early  **  My  silks  and  fine  array"  is 
upon  the  same  theme : 

My  silks  and  fine  array, 

My  smiles  and  languished  air, 

By  Love  are  driv'n  away.  • 

Whether  these  are  to  be  put  down  to  phy- 
sical as  well  as  mental  precocity  I  cannot  say, 
though  it  is  possible,  since  the  physical  and 
the  spiritual  sides  of  sex  are  prominent  in  the 
serious  and  ribald  work  of  his  later  years.  But 
these  earlier  poems  look  sometimes  like  con- 
ventional sentiments  written  down  with  a 
magical  crudity  by  a  child  who  does  not  wholly 
understand  what  he  writes.  All  are  of  love, 
but  the  **  black-eyed  maid"  is  the  only  clue, 
and  that  may  be  conventional.  They  speak, 
perhaps,  of  the  state  of  love  rather  than  of 
particular  attachment.  He  creates  a  sort  of 
Elizabethan  rustic-pastoral  Eden  made  out 
of  a  cento  of  poetic  words  and  sentiments 
mingled  with  some  plain  facts  as  in  ''  Blind 
Man's  Buff";  the  **  Pilgrim  with  his  crook 
and  hat"  is  characteristic  of  this  England  so 
1 86 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

unlike  that  of  George  III.  It  is  also  clear 
that  he  was  familiar  with  folk-songs  like 
*' Kitty  alone,"  and  '^As  I  walk'd  forth  one 
May  morning."  His  reading  and  his  own  heart 
conspired  to  make  this  fresh  but  painted 
world.  One  of  the  facts  of  life  which  haunted 
him  was  **the  youthful  harlot's  curse": 

The  Harlot's  cry  from  street  to  street 
Shall  weave  old  England's  winding  sheet. 

This,  he  says,  ''  blasts  the  new  born  infant's 
tear  and  blights  with  plagues  the  marriage 
hearse."  Jesus,  he  says  in  '*  The  Everlasting 
Gospel,"  should  have  been  born  not  of  a 
virgin  ''with  narrow  soul  and  looks  demure," 
but  of  a  Harlot,  '*  such  a  one  as  Magdalen." 
And  another  fact,  of  opposite  and  always 
joyous  effect,  is  the  honest  and  open  spending 
of  youth's  physical  vigour  in  love,  with  this 
particular  and  repeated  qualification  : 

Let  age  and  sickness  silent  rob 

The  vineyards  in  the  night ; 

But  those  who  burn  with  vig'rous  youth 

Pluck  fruits  before  the  light. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  and  far 
reaching  of  his  opinions  finds  corroboration  in 
this  peculiarity : 

Abstinence  sows  sand  all  over 
The  ruddy  limbs  and  flaming  hair, 
But  desire  gratified 
Plants  fruits  of  life  and  beauty  there. 

187 


Feminine  Influence  on  the   Poets 

Probably  he  would  have  desired  some  state 
where,  according  to  James  Hinton's  ideal, 
a  man  might  *'  be  such  a  one  that  you  will  be 
able  to  obey  your  impulses."  But  with  all 
his  curiosity  and  sympathy  he  remained 
thoroughly  and  exclusively  masculine,  ex- 
pressing himself  naturally  through  masculine 
symbols,  and  using  the  feminine  even  at  its 
loftiest  as  an  attendant  and  shadowy  spirit. 

Wordsworth  and  Shelley  owed  almost  as 
much  as  Cowper  to  the  long  and  intimate 
friendship  of  women.  Shelley  was  an  only 
son  among  sisters,  and  continued  to  surround 
himself  with  women.  Wordsworth  had  from 
his  early  manhood  onward  the  company  of 
two  women,  his  sister  Dorothy  and  his  wife, 
who  were  almost  as  directly  indispensable  to 
his  mind  as  they  were  indirectly  through  his 
domestic  ease.  Dorothy,  born  in  1771  and 
never  married,  was  only  a  year  younger  than 
Wordsworth.  From  1795  she  had  no  other 
duty  or  pleasure  but  to  be  with  him,  and  apart 
from  him  neither  was  possible  to  the  devoted 
woman.  Having  left  Cambridge  and  returned 
from  his  travels  through  revolutionary  France, 
he  was  now  free  from  all  cares  except  of  com- 
position and  *'  blest,"  as  he  tells  Coleridge 
in  **  The  Prelude  "  (a  poem  planned  and  begun 
in  his  sister's  society  at  Goslar  in  1799),  with 
Dorothy's  presence,  ''  a  joy  above  all  joys, 
188 


Poets  and   Friendly  Women 

that  seemed  another  morn  risen  on  midnoon." 
In  his  disappointment  at  the  bloody  issue  of 
the  Revolution,  ''then  it  was — 

That  the  beloved  sister  in  whose  sight 

Those  days  were  passed,  now  speaking  in  a  voice 

Of  sudden  admonition — like  a  brook 

That  did  but  cross  a  lonely  road,  and  now 

Is  seen,  heard,  felt  and  caught  at  every  turn. 

Companion  never  lost  through  many  a  league — 

Maintained  for  me  a  saving  intercourse 

With  my  true  self;    for,  though  bedimmed  and 

changed 
Much,  as  it  seemed,  I  was  no  further  changed 
Than  as  a  clouded  and  a  waning  moon ; 
She  whispered  still  that  brightness  would  return, 
She,  in  the  midst  of  all  preserved  me  still 
A  Poet,  made  me  seek  beneath  that  name, 
And  that  alone,  my  office  upon  earth,  .  .  . 

She,  he  says,  softened  his  ''oversternness" 
and  planted  the  crevices  of  his  nature  with 
flowers,  and  she  helped  to  form  his  masculine 
ideal : 

His  heart 
Be  tender  as  a  nursing  mother's  heart ; 
Of  female  softness  shall  his  life  be  full 
Of  humble  cares  and  delicate  desires. 
Mild  interests  and  gentlest  sympathies. 

Wordsworth  responded  to  her  affection  with 
a  wish  that  each  of  her  pleasant  and  painful 
emotions  ''  should  excite  a  similar  pleasure  or 
a  similar  pain  "  in  himself.  She  said  that  he 
had  no  pleasure  apart  from  her,  and  she  dis- 
covered in  him  a  '*  violence  of  affection,"  a 

189 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

'^tenderness  that  never  sleeps,"  and  '*a  deHcacy 
of  manner  such  as  I  have  observed  in  few  men." 

Coleridge  said  of  her  that  she  was  *'a 
woman  indeed — in  mind,  I  mean,  and  heart "; 
of  various  information,  watchful  in  observa- 
tion, and  her  taste  *'  a  perfect  electrometer"  ; 
and  as  early  as  1792  she  had  shown  herself  a 
candid  and  original  critic  of  her  brother's 
poetry.  His  **  Evening  Walk  "  of  that  year 
was  addressed  to  her. 

The  brother  and  sister  lived  together  first 
at  Racedown  in  1795.  They  moved  together 
to  Alfoxden.  They  toured  together  to  Tin- 
tern  and  Chepstow  in  1798,  when  Wordsworth 
composed  the  *'  Lines  written  above  Tintern 
Abbey,"  and  then  in  Germany.  Their  lives  in 
the  Lake  Country  were  never  separate  and 
seldom  divided  until  her  last  years  of  decay 
in  mind  and  body;  when  he  was  away  a  little 
while  she  lingered  out  of  doors  late  in  the 
moonlight  in  the  hope  of  hearing  his  tread. 
She  wrote  little  herself  except  her  journals, 
but  her  ''irregular  verses'*  on  the  difference 
between  "loving"  and  "liking"  are  deeply 
characteristic  as  well  as  just  in  sentiment  and 
witty  in  expression  : 

Say  not  you  /ove  a  roasted  fowl 
But  you  may  love  a  screaming  owl   .  .  . 
And  you  may  love  the  strawberry  flower, 
And  love  the  strawberry  in  its  bower  ; 

190 


Poets  and   Friendly  Women 

But  when  the  fruit,  so  often  praised 
For  beauty,  to  your  lip  is  raised, 
Say  not  you  love  the  delicate  treat, 
But  like  it,  enjoy  it,  and  thankfully  eat. 

Wordsworth  refers  to  her  again  and  again, 
as,  for  example,  in — 

She  who  dwells  with  me,  whom  I  have  loved 
With  such  communion  that  no  place  on  earth 
Can  ever  be  a  solitude  for  me. 

They  shared  their  books ;  she  read  *'  Para- 
dise Lost  "  aloud  to  him  and  both  were ''  much 
impressed,  and  also  melted  into  tears."  They 
sat  together  talking  till  dawn.  She  was 
always  ready  to  put  on  her  *'  woodland  dress  " 
to  go  with  him.  When  they  were  not  out 
together  he  could  always  share  her  observa- 
tion and  experience  through  her  journal. 
The  poem  beginning  ''  She  had  a  tall  man's 
height  or  more  *'  is  apparently  founded  upon 
an  entry  in  Dorothy  s  journal  beginning  ''  A 
very  tall  woman,  tall  much  beyond  the 
measure  of  tall  women,  called  at  the  door," 
and  dated  nearly  a  year  earlier  than  the  poem. 
Her  words  by  themselves,  though  brief  and 
unarranged  notes,  are  here,  as  in  so  many 
other  places,  quietly  graphic  and  effective,  and 
it  is  quite  possible  to  prefer  them  to  the  poem. 
Even  her  notes  of  the  scene  which  inspired 
Wordsworth's  ''  I  wandered  lonely  as  a 
cloud  "  may  still  be  read  for  the  delicacy  and 

191 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

simplicity  and  a  touch  of  rough  earthliness, 
not  inharmonious  but  not  in  the  poem. 

She  had  a  particular  curious  liking  for  the 
beggars,  men  out  of  work,  gipsies,  and  home- 
going  sailors  who  passed  her  in  the  wild  roads 
or  knocked  at  her  door  for  help,  and  she  re- 
garded them  with  perhaps  more  charity  than 
the  poet  by  himself  could  have  commanded. 
She  has  a  most  charming  page  on  the  wild 
*'  road  lass  "  accompanying  a  passing  carter — 
''her  business  seemed  to  be  all  pleasure — 
pleasure  in  her  own  motions."  She  wrote  out 
some  of  his  poems  for  him.  She  made  his 
fires,  laid  his  untidy  clothes  by,  filed  his  news- 
papers, and  then — ''  got  my  dinner,  two  boiled 
eggs  and  two  apple  tarts."  They  read  over 
his  poems  together,  or  he  repeated  them  after 
composition,  and  sometimes,  no  doubt,  as  in 
** The  Robin  and  the  Butterfly"  she  says  they 
did,  *'  We  left  out  some  lines."  She  was  not, 
however,  over  critical  and  was  ** enchanted" 
with  ''The  Idiot  Boy."  The  observations  in 
her  journals  were  often  beautiful  and  often 
very  close,  and  they  reappear  in  his  poems. 
Professor  Knight,  e.g.,  compares  her  entry: 

Then  we  sate  by  the  fire,  and  were  happy,  only 
our  tender  thoughts  became  painful — 

with  Wordsworth's  lines  : 

In  that  sweet  mood  when  pleasant  thoughts 
Bring  sad  thoughts  to  the  mind. 
192 


Poets   and  Friendly  Women 

Their  minds  probably  worked  much  to- 
gether and  from  a  mutual  stimulus,  and  even 
if  a  thought  had  originally  been  his  the  record 
of  it  in  her  journal  was  valuable.  It  is  im- 
possible to  assign  priority  to  any  of  their 
common  ideas  and  phrases.  For  example, 
on  October  ii,  1802,  Dorothy  says:  *' We 
walked  to  the  Easedale  hills  to  hunt  water- 
falls." Wordsworth's  poem  ''Louisa,"  where 
the  phrase,  ''To  hunt  the  waterfalls"  occurs, 
is  attributed  to  either  1803  or  1805. 

Mary  Hutchinson,  whom  Wordsworth 
married  in  1802,  was  as  loving  and  sym- 
pathetic as  Dorothy,  though  perhaps  less 
articulate,  a  woman  of  character  but  not 
enough  to  disturb  the  poet.  She  and  Dorothy 
mingle  in  the  mind  into  one  woman,  a 
flawless  example  of  the  submissive  type. 
The  two  combined  to  make  him  and  one 
another  always  at  ease  and  often  happy.  He 
says  of  her : 

Wise  as  women  are 
When  genial  circumstance  hath  favoured  them, 
She  welcomed  what  was  given,  and  craved  no 

more  .  .  . 
Whatever  the  scene  presented  to  her  view 
That  was  the  best,  to  that  she  was  attuned 
By  her  benign  simplicity  of  life.  .  .  . 

God  delights 
In  such  a  being ;  for  her  common  thoughts 
Are  piety,  her  life  is  gratitude. 

N  193 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 
With  her  he  enjoys  the  bliss, 

The  bliss  of  walking  daily  in  life's  prime 
Through  field  or  forest  with  the  maid  we  love, 
While  yet  our  hearts  are  young,  while  yet  we 

breathe 
Nothing  but  happiness,  in  some  lone  nook. 
Deep  vale,  or  anywhere,  the  home  of  both 
From  which  it  would  be  misery  to  stir. 

She  was  the  Maid  of  the  *'  Farewell,"  the 
gentle  Maid  **  whose  pleasures  are  in  wild  fields 
gathered."  She  was  true  to  Wordsworth's 
idea  of  wisdom,  *'true  to  the  kindred 
points  of  Heaven  and  Home."  She  was  the 
maid  of  ''  She  was  a  phantom  of  delight," 
though  the  germ  of  that  poem  was  ''four 
lines  composed  as  a  part  of  the  verses  on 
the  '  Highland  Girl.' "  In  a  sonnet  he 
speaks  of  her  ''  goodness,  never  melancholy  " 
and  her  ''large  heart  and  humble  mind, 
that  cast  into  one  vision,  future,  present, 
past."  In  the  dedication  to  "The  White 
Doe  of  Rylstone"  he  reminds  her  of  their 
happy  tears  together  in  reading  "  The  Faerie 
Queene  " — 

When  years  of  wedded  life  were  as  a  day 
Whose  current  answers  to  the  heart's  desire. 

She  bore  him  children,  and  they  were 
constant  inmates  of  one  house.  Her  for- 
bearance and  Dorothy's  were  apparently  as 
194 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

easy  to  their  love  as  they  were  necessary. 
She  and  Dorothy  alike  seem  born  to  respond 
to  the  poet's  love  and  admiration  of  one  in 
whom  Nature 

Hath  tempered  so  her  clay 

That  every  hour  thy  heart  runs  wild 

Yet  never  once  doth  go  astray. 

She  was  the  author  herself  of  the  two  lines  : 

They  flash  upon  the  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude. 

But  it  was  her  calm  fresh  presence,  **  a 
spirit  to  penetrate  the  lofty  and  the  low," 
that  had  most  influence  upon  the  poet,  not 
her  observation  or  her  merely  intellectual 
powers.  Twenty  years  after  their  marriage, 
in  his  '*0  dearer  far  than  light  and  life  are 
dear,"  he  addresses  her  as  one  for  whom  all 
the  future  '*  with  '  sober  certainties '  of  love  is 
blest": 

Peace  settles  where  the  intellect  is  meek, 
And  Love  is  dutiful  in  thought  and  deed. 

In  her,  in  her  peaceful  sister  Sarah  Hutchin- 
son, and  in  Dorothy,  he  was  blessed  in 
finding  the  very  type  most  admired  by  him 
and  most  suitable  to  his  temper  and  way  of 
life,  the  meek  domestic  woman,  the  unob- 
trusive necessity,  who  yet  had  quick  intelli- 
gence and  lasting  freshness  of  spirit, 

195 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Wordsworth  has  left  us  little  except 
"Strange  fits  of  passion  have  I  known"  to 
throw  much  light  on  a  dark  saying  of  his  : 

Had  I  been  a  writer  of  love-poetry  it  would  have 
been  natural  to  me  to  write  with  a  degree  of  warmth 
which  would  hardly  have  been  approved  by  my 
principles,  and  which  might  have  been  undesirable 
for  the  reader. 

Perhaps  he  was  thinking  of  nothing  more  than 
what  in  that  poem  he  tells  in  *'  the  Lover's 
ear  alone."  Or  it  may  have  been  but  the 
naive  expression  of  his  astonishment  at 
feelings  which  he  may  have  been  too  ready 
to  believe  peculiar  or  exceptionally  strong 
in  himself.  But  his  nature  was  strong  in 
ways  not  compatible  with  the  usual  view  of 
Wordsworth,  as  may  be  gathered  from  stories 
of  his  neglect  of  the  conventions,  his  master- 
ful indolence,  the  sternness  which  it  needed 
his  sister  to  soften,  and  the  ''  stiff  moody 
temper"  which  made  him,  when  a  little 
boy,  strike  a  whip  through  a  family  portrait 
out  of  pure  devilry.  Describing  his  school 
days,  ''  the  vernal  heat  of  poesy  "  sends  him 
to  solitude  *'  like  a  sick  lover,"  but  he  does 
not  confess  to  having  been  a  lover.  Later, 
he  describes  a  night  of  dancing  : 

Spirits  upon  the  stretch,  and  here  and  there 
Slight  shocks  of  young  love-liking  interspersed, 
Whose  transient  pleasure  mounted  to  the  head, 
And  tingled  through  the  veins. 

196 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

But  he  goes  out  at  dawn,  and  looking  upon 
the  pomp  of  morning  with  full  heart,  be- 
comes a  ''dedicated  spirit,"  giving  up  foolish 
worldliness.  The  'Move-liking"  was  perhaps 
not  much,  even  if  we  allow  for  the  slighting 
retrospect  of  maturity.  In  any  case,  in 
recording  his  later  visit  to  a  theatre,  he  tells 
us  that  "something  of  a  girlish  child-like 
gloss  survived  for  scenes  like  these."  The 
lover's  enthusiasm  in  "  Vaudracour  and 
Julia"- 

Earth  breathed  in  one  great  presence  of  the  spring  ; 
Life  turned  the  meanest  of  her  implements, 
Before  his  eyes,  to  price  above  all  gold  .  .  . 

is  the  nearest  in  the  early  poems  to  a  proof 
of  passionate  love.  Neither  in  verse  nor 
prose  has  he  said  anything  more  to  betray 
himself.  Some  of  his  poems  concerning 
women  describe  their  beauty  or  his  admira- 
tion, but  those  which  are  most  passionate 
relate  to  emotion  remembered  in  tranquillity; 
and  the  cause  seems  forgotten  in  the  emotion, 
as  in  "  She  dwelt  among  the  untrodden  ways  " 
or  "A  slumber  did  my  spirit  seal."  Nothing 
appears  to  be  known  of  the  poems  written  in 
1799,  several  of  them  mentioning  "  Lucy," 
and  all  forming  a  natural  group.  It  is 
assumed  that  they  are  fictitious.  There  are 
no  poems  of  rapture  addressed  to  a  woman. 
He  writes  of  beautiful  and  young  women  in 

J97 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

a  manner  so  detached  for  the  most  part  that 
we  never  give  its  face  value  to  the  phrase  : 

Oh  !  might  I  kiss  the  mountain  rains 
That  sparkle  on  her  cheek. 

This  makes  it  impossible  that  *' Louisa" 
should  have  meant  simply  Dorothy.  He  was 
thirty-three  years  old  and  had  been  three 
years  married  when  this  was  written,  and  the 
poem  is  called  explicitly  ''Louisa,  after  accom- 
panying her  on  a  mountain  excursion." 
There  is  hardly  an  alternative  but  to  accept 
the  attitude  as  avuncular.  He  liked  to  dwell 
upon  this  wild  innocent  type,  suggested  per- 
haps by  the  girlhood  of  his  sister,  and  in  ''  To 
a  Young  Lady  who  had  been  reproached  for 
taking  long  walks  in  the  country"  he  defends 
Louisa,  foreseeing  her  as  wife  and  friend, 
**  healthy  as  a  shepherd  boy  " — 

Thy  thoughts  and  feelings  shall  not  die, 

Nor  leave  thee,  when  grey  hairs  are  nigh, 

A  melancholy  slave ; 

But  an  old  age  serene  and  bright, 

And  lovely  as  a  Lapland  night, 

Shall  lead  thee  to  thy  grave. 

For  his  Muse  he  himself  suggests  the  guise 
of  Milkmaid  or  Mermaid.  Having  spoken 
of  Lady  Beaumont's  large  dark  eyes,  he  must 
add: 

Dark,  but  to  every  gentle  feeling  true 
As  if  their  lustre  flowed  from  ether's  purest  blue, 
198 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

Woman,  for  him,  mustbe  gentle  and  innocent, 
and  either  young  and  birdlike  or  sober  and 
domesticated,  however  strong  and  wild,  and 
he  has  only  an  external  admiration  for  the 
queenly  dark  beggar  woman.  Marriage  could 
not  affect  a  lover  of  this  kind.  He  con- 
tinued to  write  of  women  always  as  if  much 
younger,  smaller  and  less  human  creatures 
than  himself. 

Shelley  was  brought  up  with  five  sisters 
younger  than  himself  and  only  one  brother, 
the  youngest  of  the  family.  He  was  friendly 
with  his  sisters  :  with  Elizabeth  he  collabo- 
rated at  an  early  age  in  writing  a  play, 
and  possibly  in  the  ''Poems  by  Victor  and 
Cazire,"  and  she  wrote  verses  very  much  like 
his  own  and  consoled  him  in  his  despair  ; 
he  encouraged  Hellen  at  verse-making. 
Until  the  final  breach  with  his  family  he 
made  many  attempts  to  ''awaken  their  in- 
tellects," visited  them  at  school  and  gave 
them  cakes  and  advice,  but,  failing  to  satisfy 
himself,  he  wished  to  have  two  children,  if 
possible  girls  of  four  or  five,  whom  he  might 
bring  up  in  a  sequestered  spot  and  so  study 
the  impression  of  the  world  upon  minds 
secure  from  human  prejudice.  The  sisters  in 
return  were  devoted  to  Shelley,  and  after  he 
was  sent  down  from  Oxford  they  saved  their 
pocket-money  to  supply  him.     When  he  was 

199 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

sixteen  he  tried  to  open  a  correspondence  with 
the  youthful  author  Felicia  Brown  (after- 
wards Hemans),  but  had  no  encouragement 
from  her.  When  about  seventeen  he  was 
close  friends  with  his  beautiful  cousin, 
Harriet  Grove,  who  had  dallied  with  scep- 
ticism. Some  chapters  of  ''Zastrozzi"  are 
said  to  be  by  her.  He  tried  to  improve  her 
unorthodoxy,  but  only  brought  the  relation- 
ship to  an  end  by  shocking  her  and  her 
family.  She  married  soon  afterwards,  and  he 
exclaimed  in  the  manner  of  Locksley  Hall  : 
**  She  is  gone !  she  is  lost  to  me  for  ever ! 
She  married  I  Married  to  a  clod  of  earth, 
she  will  become  as  insensible  herself;  all 
those  fine  capabilities  will  moulder."  The 
disappointment  inspired  him  with  indignation 
against  intolerance  :  *'  I  swear,"  he  said,  ''  that 
never  will  I  forgive  intolerance !  It  is  the 
only  point  on  which  I  allow  myself  to 
encourage  revenge."  His  first  wife,  Harriet 
Westbrook,  he  found  at  school  with  his 
sisters.  He  began  by  corresponding  with 
her  for  the  improvement  of  her  and  of  her 
companions,  his  sisters ;  not  only  with 
Harriet  who  was  a  graceful,  joyous-hearted 
girl  with  light  brown  hair  and  a  pleasant 
voice,  but  with  her  elder  sister  who  had  no 
charms  and  called  for  that  tolerance  which  he 
expressed  when  he  said  that  *'  if  compelled  to 
200 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

associate  even  with  Caliban  he  would  find 
something  to  admire."  Another  of  his  cor- 
respondents was  Elizabeth  Kitchener,  a 
Sussex  schoolmistress  aged  twenty-eight 
when  he  was  nineteen,  in  1811.  Shelley  lent 
her  the  books  of  poets  and  philosophers  after 
one  meeting,  and  invited  her  to  a  correspond- 
ence in  which  they  were  to  assail  one  another's 
orthodoxy  and  unorthodoxy.  She  gave  him 
an  opportunity  to  pour  out  in  many  letters  of 
strident  eloquence  all  that  he  felt  about 
Nature  and  man  and  society,  and  about  the 
everlastingness  of  their  noble  and  intimate 
friendship.  But  the  correspondence  was 
hardly  begun  in  Wales  when  he  hastened  to 
London  to  rescue  Harriet  Westbrook  from 
misery  and  persecution.  She  did  him  the 
honour  of  loving  him,  and  he  consented 
to  marry  her  to  make  her  happy.  He  did 
not  cease  to  be  her  instructor,  while  she 
in  return  read  aloud  in  a  beautiful  voice 
which  nevertheless  sent  him  to  sleep.  He 
continued  to  write  to  Miss  Hitchener  and, 
having  to  paint  the  golden  age  in  a  poem  and 
draw  a  picture  of  Heaven,  told  her  that  he 
could  do  neither  without  her.  He  invited 
her  to  Wales  to  share  a  castle,  which  even  he 
calls  "  somewhat  aerial,"  with  his  mother,  his 
uncle  Pilfold,  and  some  of  Miss  Hitchener's 
pupils.      He   longed   for   her  in   Wales    or 

20I 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Ireland,  saying  :  *'  Oh  that  you  were  with 
us.  You  have  said  you  are  not  handsome, 
but,  though  the  sleekness  of  your  skin,  the 
symmetry  of  your  form,  might  not  attract  the 
courtiers  of  Dublin  Castle,  yet  that  tongue 
of  energy,  and  that  eye  of  fire,  would  awe 
them  into  native  insignificance  and  command 
the  conviction  of  those  whose  hearts  vibrate 
in  unison  with  justice  and  benevolence." 
Some  passages  of  his  letters  run  to  blank 
verse  in  their  excitement,  and  Professor 
Dowden  has  pointed  out  that  some  of  it 
appeared  with  variations  in  ''  Queen  Mab." 
On  her  side  she  was  well  satisfied  to  be 
'*  talking  to  Percy  about  virtue."  All  that 
he  required  of  her  was  an  intercourse  that 
would  suffer  gladly  his  incontinence  of  words 
and  ideas.  When  at  last  she  joined  the 
Shelleys,  they  spent  many  hours  reading  and 
talking  together ;  together  they  launched 
bottles  containing  his  ''  Declaration  of 
Rights  "  into  the  sea ;  and  under  the  same 
impulse  as  unlocked  his  brain  and  heart 
with  her  he  was  now  writing  ''  Queen  Mab  " 
— the  dedication  was  to  Harriet,  as  his 
'*  purer  mind  "  and  *'  inspiration."  To  this 
same  period  Professor  Dowden  attributes 
the  solemnly  rapturous  blank  verse  to 
Harriet,  prophesying  deathless  love  between 
them : 
202 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

O  thou 
Whose  dear  love  gleamed  upon  the  gloomy  path 
Which  this  lone  spirit  travelled,  drear  and  cold, 
Yet  swiftly  leading  to  those  awful  limits 
Which  mark  the  bounds  of  time  and  of  the  space 
When  Time  shall  be  no  more ;  wilt  thou  not  turn 
Those  spirit-beaming  eyes  and  look  on  me, 
Until  I  be  assured  that  Earth  is  Heaven 
And  Heaven  is  Earth  ? 

Harriet  possessed  what  he  could  spare  of 
his  heart  from  his  ideas.  Miss  Kitchener 
was  loved  only  as  representing  those  ideas, 
though  he  might  well  have  believed  his  love 
something  more  had  she  invited  him.  She  was 
one  of  those  ''  many  mortal  forms  "  in  which 
he  *'  rashly  sought "  the  shadow  of  that  Being 
of  *' exceeding  glory"  whom  he  had  met  in 
dreams  and  solitude  and  poetry  and  philo- 
sophy. Harriet  and  her  sister  Eliza  West- 
brook  probably  helped  Shelley  to  get  tired  of 
Miss  Kitchener,  and  in  a  phrase  which  might 
have  come  from  them  he  described  her  at 
the  end  of  1812  as  '*our  late  tormentor  and 
schoolmistress."  He  was  astonished  at  his 
'*  fatuity  and  inconsistency  and  bad  taste  "  in 
having  her  at  his  house  for  four  months. 
Yet  she  had  done  her  useful  part  in  preserving 
to  Shelley  his  belief  in  a  ''happy  state  of 
equal  law"  attainable  by  ''habits  of  the 
strictest  virtue."  He  was  now  seeing  much  of 
the  family  of  Godwin,  and  of  the  vegetarian 

203 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Newtons,  whose  children  he  loved.  But 
Harriet  did  not  cease  to  interest  him.  He 
helped  her  at  Latin.  She  was  a  bad  house- 
keeper but  she  sang  ''  Robin  Adair'*  for  him 
and  read  aloud  Berkeley,  Sir  William  Drum- 
mond,  Southey  s'^Cid"and  Scott  s  ^^Rokeby." 
In  the  middle  of  1813  their  first  child  lanthe 
was  born,  and  Shelley  wrote  a  sonnet  upon  it 
like  Coleridge's  upon  his  first-born  : 

I  love  thee  Baby !  for  thine  own  sweet  sake  ; 
Dearest  when  most  thy  tender  traits  express 
The  image  of  thy  mother's  loveliness. 

He  went  to  Bracknell  to  be  near  the 
Boinvilles — Mrs.  Boinville,  a  sister  of  Mrs. 
Newton,  a  beautiful  lady  whose  ''  face  was 
as  a  damsel's  face  and  yet  her  hair  was 
grey,"  and  her  daughter  Cornelia  Turner 
who  encouraged  Shelley  in  Italian  studies. 
In  this  circle  all  were  naturally  of  Shelley's 
opinion,  instead  of  by  imitation  like  Harriet. 
Harriet  had  not  suckled  her  child,  but  she 
now  read  less  and  grew  tired  of  unusual 
opinions  and  behaviour.  Her  sister  Eliza 
was  now  a  cause  of  actual  ''  disgust  and 
horror  "  in  Shelley.  He  was  not  happy  away 
from  the  refined  and  sympathetic  Boinvilles, 
and  early  in  181 4  it  is  evident  that  his  feelings 
were  disturbed,  though  he  may  not  have  been 
out  of  love  with  Harriet,  whom  he  remarried 
204 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

in  March.  *'  Thy  dewy  looks,"  /'  Away  !'  the 
moor  is  dark  "  and  '*  Thy  look  of  love  has 
power  to  calm  "  were  written  at  this  time. 
The  first  may  refer  to  Cornelia  Turner  or  any 
other  woman  ;  it  is  a  poem  of  little  value 
except  as  autobiography,  and  for  that  it  is  not 
explicit.  *'Away!  the  moor"  is  made  im- 
perfect by  the  same  need  and  lack  of  explana- 
tion :  it  makes  its  own  spiritual  and  physical 
world,  but  '*  the  music  of  two  voices  and  the 
light  of  one  sweet  smile  "  present  apparently 
insuperable  difficulties.  ''Thy  look  of  love" 
is  an  appeal  to  Harriet  written  during 
a  revival  of  his  affection  for  her.  This 
belongs  to  May,  the  month  perhaps  of 
Shelley's  first  meeting  with  Mary  Godwin, 
a  girl  with  golden  hair  and  hazel  eyes, 
aged  sixteen ;  ''  Mine  eyes  were  dim,"  was 
addressed  to  her  in  June  1814,  a  poem  left 
incomplete  and  too  much  perplexed  with 
immediate  and  private  feeling  to  be  either 
quite  intelligible  or  quite  poetry.  So  also 
with  ''  Yet  look  on  me,"  in  which  he  addresses 
Mary  Godwin — it  has  been  suggested  that  it 
was  Harriet ! — as  one  whose  voice  ''  is  as  the 
tone  of  my  heart's  echo."  Shelley  was  con- 
vinced that  Harriet  was  unfaithful  to  him. 
In  July  he  saw  her  in  London  and  arranged 
a  separation.  He  was  not  at  ease  over  the 
change.     His  eyes  were  bloodshot ;  he  had 

205 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

laudanum  constantly  by  him ;  he  repeated  : 
*'  Man's  happiest  lot  is  not  to  be."  Harriet, 
he  explained,  was  a  ''noble  animal  "  :  but  un- 
able to  ''  feel  poetry  "  and  ''  understand  philo- 
sophy," she  was  an  unfit  wife.  But  he  invited 
her  to  join  him  and  Mary  when  they  left 
England  together.  He  saw  the  proposed 
arrangement  in  ''some  sweet  retreat  among 
the  mountains  "  only  as  it  concerned  himself; 
desiring  it  himself,  it  immediately  seemed 
possible,  and  other  people  adapted  themselves, 
in  his  mind,  like  dummies  or  statues  to  the 
situation.  He  and  Mary  were  reading  "  As 
you  like  it,"  and  they  shared  a  love  of  the 
sublime  and  beautiful  unpopulated  scenery 
on  their  journey  from  Paris  to  Switzerland. 
On  the  stay  at  Brunnen  Shelley  began  the 
"Assassins"  and  dictated  some  pages  to 
Mary.  With  them  was  Clara  Mary  Jane 
Clairmont,  daughter  of  Godwin's  second  wife 
by  her  first  husband,  a  lively  and  clever  dark 
girl,  almost  a  year  younger  than  Mary,  but 
able  to  join  the  lovers  in  their  pleasures 
among  books  and  Nature.  When  Mary  was 
pregnant  in  1815  and  went  early  to  bed.  Miss 
Clairmont — as  Claire  Clairmont  she  is  always 
known — sat  up  with  Shelley  talking,  and 
when  a  pillow  moved  one  night  in  Claire's 
room  by  no  visible  agency  both  were  equally 
nervous  and  excited  in  discussing  "these 
206 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

mysteries."  Shelley  appears  to  have  sus- 
pected that  she  was  too  fond  of  him, 
blamed  her  incapacity  for  friendship,  and 
bade  himself  be  content  with  one  great 
affection  and  never  let  more  than  one  into 
**  the  hallowed  circle." 

For  Mary  he  had  a  great  admiration,  for 
her  '* exquisitely  fashioned  intelligence"  and 
superior  *'  originality  and  simplicity  of  mind." 
Her  thoughts  alone,  he  said,  could  awaken 
his,  and  without  hers  his  mind  was  dead  and 
cold  ;  so  much  so  that  he  believed  he  would 
be  as  submissive  to  her  as  Harriet  was  to 
himself.  They  read  abundantly  together,  the 
poetry  of  Spenser,  Wordsworth,  Southey,  and 
Kirke  White  ;  the  novels  of  Voltaire,  Godwin, 
and  Monk  Lewis  ;  books  of  travel  and  so  on. 
Shelley  and  Claire  walked  and  talked  and 
read  Italian  together.  Mary  was  jealous  and 
openly  suspicious  :  ''  Pray,  is  Clara  with  you," 
she  asked,  when  Shelley  was  away  house- 
hunting. In  the  spring  of  1816  the  three 
left  England  together  for  Paris  and  Geneva, 
but  by  this  time  Claire  was  pregnant  by  Lord 
Byron,  whom  she  had  met  when  she  was 
trying  to  get  on  to  the  stage.  Byron  was  in 
Switzerland  before  them  and  the  four  became 
companions,  though  Mary  did  not  join  the 
nightly  talks  of  Byron  and  Shelley  owing  to 
her    *'  timidity    and    incapacity,"    she    said. 

207 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Their  child  was  probably  not  always  a  plea- 
sure to  Shelley,  and  Mary  wrote  to  him  anti- 
cipating that  he  would  like  him  more  when 
he  had  a  nursery  to  himself  and  was  only 
admitted  '*  dressed  and  in  good  humour." 
She  playfully  asked  him  if  he  would  be  happy 
with  ''another  little  squaller";  at  which 
he  would  look  grave — ''  but  I  do  not  mean 
anything."  Mary  was  growing  into  a  more 
and  more  moderate  young  woman,  afraid,  for 
example,  that  Cobbett  was  capable  of  becoming 
a  Marat.  She  was  already  careful  and  social 
in  her  views  of  practical  things.  It  was  charac- 
teristic of  her  to  write,  giving  all  her  excellent 
reasons  for  and  against  going  abroad  in  the 
winter  of  1817-18,  but  leaving  to  him  ''the 
manly  part,  to  decide."  To  Italy  they  went, 
still  with  Claire  and  now  her  baby  also, 
Allegra.  Mary  copied  "  Rosalind  and  Helen." 
Shelley  read  "  Hamlet  "  aloud  ;  he  and  Mary 
read  together  Ariosto,  Spenser,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  and  Shakespeare.  Shelley  could  do 
no  original  work  in  the  summer  of  181 8,  and 
he  translated  Plato's  Symposium ;  but  Mary 
having  said  that  Plato's  conception  of  love 
and  friendship  shocked  the  manners  of  their 
time,  he  undertook  also  to  write  "  A  discourse 
on  the  Manners  of  the  Ancients  relative  to 
the  subject  of  Love,"  which  was  only  begun. 
An  instance  of  Mrs.  Shelley's  matured  con- 
208 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

ventional  judgment  is  very  noticeable  in  1819. 
Their  Swiss  maid  was  ''  betrayed "  by  a 
man  whom  they  believed  to  be  of  very  bad 
character,  yet  Mrs.  Shelley  forced  him  to 
marry  the  girl,  saying,  *'  I  would  not  throw 
the  girl  on  the  world  without  in  some  degree 
binding  her  to  this  man,"  thereby  giving  him 
grounds  for  lifelong  resentment,  and  her  for 
helpless  misery.  Mary  continued  to  improve 
herself:  she  had  drawing  lessons  at  Rome  in 
18 19,  while  Claire  had  singing  lessons. 
Shelley's  habit  in  1819  was  to  read  in  bed 
until  half-past  seven,  then  to  rise  and  break- 
fast, and  to  read  or  write  until  dinner  at 
two ;  after  dinner,  to  read  Dante  with  Mary, 
gossip,  eat  grapes  and  figs,  and  sometimes 
walk ;  at  half-past  five  to  read  Spanish  with 
Mrs.  Gisborne  until  near  seven ;  then  to  call 
for  Mary  and  stroll  till  supper  time.  Mrs. 
Gisborne  was  another  of  the  middle-aged 
women  who  were  kind  to  Shelley.  She  had 
had  great  loveliness,  was  an  old  friend  of  God- 
win's, amiable  and  accomplished.  She  led  him 
to  study  Calderon,  and  he  addressed  to  her 
one  of  the  most  charming  of  letters  in  verse. 
Another  such  friend  was  Lady  Mountcashell. 
She  was  afterwards  the  author  of  ''  Advice  to 
Young  Mothers  on  the  Physical  Education 
of  Children ;  by  a  Grandmother,"  a  book 
strongly  individual  in  ideas,  and  even  stronger 

o  209 


Feminine   Influence  on  the  Poets 

in  expression  :  it  is  characteristic  of  her  to 
recommend  that  punishments  should  be  so 
contrived  that  they  should  appear  the  natural 
consequence  of  the  fault,  and  that  no  faults 
should  be  punished  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
children  think  themselves  objects  of  contempt. 
Her  garden  inspired  **  The  Sensitive  Plant," 
and  she  was,  says  Medwin,  ''  one  of  the 
few  persons  with  whom  the  Shelleys  were 
intimate." 

When  Shelley  wrote  *'  The  Cenci "  he  dis- 
cussed the  scenes  with  Mary  beforehand  ;  he 
read  ''Don  Juan"  aloud  to  her,  and  they  shared 
Virgil  and  Lucretius  ;  they  were  busy  trans- 
lating Spinoza  together.  Mary  was  anxious 
for  Shelley's  fame,  and  was  querulous  at  the 
frivolity  of  ''The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  thus  call- 
ing forth  "  How  my  dear  Mary, — are  you 
critic-bitten  ?  " 

In  1820  Mary  and  Claire  "  find  something 
to  fight  about  every  day,"  and  Claire  went 
away  as  a  lady-companion  to  Florence. 
Shelley  was  still  very  fond  and  considerate 
of  her,  and  enjoyed  perfect  friendly  intimacy 
with  her ;  his  language  was  affectionate,  and 
he  called  her  his  "  best  girl."  When  he 
thought  she  would  be  happier  with  them  he 
invited  her  back,  and  just  before  his  death 
she  returned.  He  made  her  an  allowance  to 
help  her  peace  and  independence.  Time  after 
210 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

time  Shelley  discussed  with  her  the  fate  of 
her  Allegra — now  in  Byron's  charge — and 
attempted  to  make  Byron  see  and  give  way 
to  her  wishes.  She  had  no  kinder  or  better 
friend  than  Shelley.  But  it  was  assumed  or 
asserted  by  some  that  Claire  was  his  mistress, 
that  she  had  sent  a  child  by  him  to  the 
Foundling  Hospital,  that  Shelley  ill-treated 
his  wife.  In  August  1821  Mary  had  to  write 
to  a  friend  in  Venice  : 

To  defend  him  to  whom  I  have  the  happiness 
to  be  united,  whom  I  love  and  esteem  beyond  all 
living  creatures,  from  the  foulest  calumnies.  .  .  . 
You  knew  Shelley,  you  saw  his  face,  and  could  you 
believe  them.^*  .  .  .  Need  I  say  that  the  union 
between  my  husband  and  myself  has  ever  been  un- 
disturbed. Love  caused  our  first  imprudence — love 
which,  improved  by  esteem,  a  perfect  trust  one  in 
the  other,  a  confidence  and  affection  which,  visited 
as  we  have  been  by  severe  calamities  (have  we  not 
lost  two  children  ?),  has  increased  daily  and  knows 
no  bounds.  .  .  .  Those  who  know  me  believe  my 
simple  word — it  is  not  long  ago  that  my  father  said 
in  a  letter  to  me  that  he  had  never  known  me  utter 
a  falsehood — but  you,  easy  as  you  have  been  to 
credit  evil,  who  may  be  more  deaf  to  truth — to  you 
I  swear  by  all  that  I  hold  sacred  upon  heaven  and 
earth,  by  a  vow  which  I  should  die  to  write  if  I 
affirmed  a  falsehood — I  swear  by  the  life  of  my 
child,  by  my  blessed  beloved  child,  that  I  know  the 
accusations  to  be  false. 

In  1820  Shelley  had  said  of  his  wife 
that  it  was  not  their  custom  to  divide  their 

211 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

pleasures  **  when  we  can  help  it."  But  Mrs. 
Shelley,  having  the  care  of  children  and  so 
careless  a  husband,  had  grown  older  than  he, 
and  to  him  this  must  often  have  seemed  cold- 
ness, as  will  surprise  nobody  who  has  seen 
Mrs.  Shelley's  portrait.  Consequently  Shelley 
sometimes  knew  the  need  of  friends  who  could 
*'  feel  and  understand  "  as  Mary  did  not ;  he 
could  regard  her  calmly,  admire  her  powers, 
and  yet  see  in  her  a  lack  of  power  to  '*  excite 
the  sympathy  indispensable  "  to  the  applica- 
tion of  her  powers  to  domestic  life.  At  another 
time  he  wished  to  retire  from  the  world  and 
with  her,  and  Mary  herself  says  somewhere 
that  Shelley  and  she  have  vowed  to  go  to 
Greece,  should  it  be  free,  to  ''one  of  those 
beautiful  islands  where  earth,  ocean,  and  sky 
form  the  Paradise  "  ;  for  she  and  Claire  joined 
Shelley  in  his  enthusiasm  for  the  revolutionary 
movement  in  Naples,  Genoa,  and  Greece,  and 
Prince  Mavrocordato  was  teaching  her  Greek. 
It  is  noticeable  also  that  at  Pisa,  near  Tre- 
lawny,  Williams,  Byron  and  others,  Shelley 
saw  much  more  of  the  men,  and  that  Mary 
remarked  on  their  flocking  together  *'  as  they 
do  not  like  fetching  a  walk  with  their  absurd 
womankind." 

Among  the  newest  of  Shelley's  friends  were 
Edward  Williams  and  his  wife  Jane.  Mary 
told   Claire   that    she   was    ''certainly  very 

212 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

pretty,"  but  ''wanted  animation."  Shelley 
told  her  that  she  was  *'  an  extremely  pretty  and 
gentle  woman,  apparently  not  very  clever,"  but 
he  liked  her  very  much  after  only  seeing  her 
for  an  hour.  Later,  Mary  added  that  she  had 
*'  a  very  pretty  voice,  and  a  taste  and  ear  for 
music  which  is  almost  miraculous,"  and  that 
the  harp  was  her  favourite  instrument.  Shelley 
found  her  upon  further  acquaintance  a  woman 
of  sensibility,  but  not  much  imagination.  Her 
guitar's  most  enchanting  music,  with  sailing 
and  reading  Spanish  dramas,  helped  to  make 
the  charm  of  the  ''  divine  bay  "  where  his  last 
days  were  spent.  Jane  Williams  was  the 
comforter  of  Shelley's  broken  colloquial  poem, 
"  Sleep,  sleep  on  "  :  having  mesmerised  him, 
as  she  sometimes  did  for  physical  pain,  she 
asked  him  ''How  may  your  malady  be  cured?" 
and  he  replied,  "What  would  cure  me  that 
would  kill  me,"  in  almost  the  words  of  that 
poem.  To  her  he  sent  the  "  Best  and 
brightest.  Come  away,"  "  Now  the  last  day 
of  many  days,"  and  "  Ariel  to  Miranda." 

Late  in  1820  Shelley  met  Emilia  Viviani 
in  the  convent  of  S.  Anna,  a  girl  who  had 
been  shut  up  there  with  her  sister  for  two  years 
because  their  mother  feared  their  rivalry  with 
her  lover.  She  was  beautiful  and  made  for 
love.  Mary  and  Claire  as  well  as  Shelley 
became  attached  to  her,  and  visited  her  and 

213 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

sent  her  presents  of  books.    Medwin  described 
her  : 

Her  profuse  black  hair,  tied  in  the  most  simple 
knot,  after  the  manner  of  a  Greek  muse  in  the 
Florence  Gallery,  displayed  to  its  full  height  her 
brow,  fair  as  that  of  the  marble  of  which  I  speak. 
She  was  also  of  about  the  same  height  as  the  antique. 
Her  features  possessed  a  rare  faultlessness  and 
almost  Grecian  contour,  the  nose  and  forehead 
making  a  straight  line.  Her  eyes  had  the  sleepy 
voluptuousness,  if  not  the  colour,  of  Beatrice 
Cenci's.  They  had,  indeed,  no  definite  colour, 
changing  with  the  changing  feeling,  to  dark  or 
light,  as  the  soul  animated  them.  Her  smile  was 
deficient  in  sweetness,  her  voice  wanted  melody, 
and  sounded  loud  to  an  English  ear.  .  .  .  She  ges- 
ticulated too  much,  and  her  features  were  too  much 
in  motion. 

She  w^rote  back  to  her  *'  adored  Mary,"  her 
*'  dear  brother,"  and  *'  adorato  sposo."  Her 
only  hope  of  escape  had  been  in  a  marriage 
arranged  by  her  parents  before  she  had  met 
the  intended  man.  Medwin  went  to  see  her 
and  was  reminded  of  Margaret  in  ''  Faust "  : 

There  was  a  lark  in  the  parloir,  that  had  lately 
been  caught.  '*  Poor  prisoner,"  said  she,  looking  at 
it  compassionately,  **you  will  die  of  grief!  How  I 
pity  thee !  What  must  thou  suffer,  when  thou 
hearest  in  the  clouds,  the  songs  of  thy  parent  birds, 
or  some  flocks  of  thy  kind  on  the  wing,  in  search  of 
other  skies — of  new  fields — of  new  delights  !  But 
like  me,  thou  wilt  be  forced  to  remain  here  always 
— to  wear  out  thy  miserable  existence  here.  Why 
can  I  not  release  thee  ?  " 

214 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

This,  he  thinks,  might  have  been  the  origin 
of  ''  Poor  captive  bird "  in  the  ''  Epipsy- 
chidion  "  which  she  afterwards  inspired.  If 
only  she  could  escape.  She  was  willing  to  go 
anywhere  with  the  Shelleys ;  for  she  did  not 
and  could  never  love  any  thing  or  person  so 
much  as  them.  ''  In  friendship,"  she  said, 
speaking  in  the  language  of  Shelley,  **  every- 
thing must  be  in  common ;  few,  indeed,  very 
few  are  the  persons  who  know  this  sublime 
and  sweet  Divinity  ;  but  we  know  it,  and  that 
is  enough  I  "  She  wrote  verse  as  well  as  prose, 
and  in  her  rapturous  address  to  *'The  True 
Love"  may  be  felt  the  same  spirit  as  in 
''  Epipsychidion  " : 

Love !  soul  of  the  world !  Love  the  source  of 
all  that  is  good,  of  all  that  is  lovely !  What  would 
the  universe  be,  failing  thy  creative  flame?  A 
horrible  desert.  But  far  from  this,  it  is  the  sole 
shadow  of  all  goodness,  of  all  loveliness,  and  of  all 
felicity.  Of  that  love  I  speak,  that  possessing  itself 
of  all  our  soul,  of  our  entire  will,  sublimes  and  raises 
one,  above  every  other  individual  of  the  same  species; 
and  all  energetic,  all  pure,  all  divine,  inspires  none 
but  actions  that  are  magnanimous,  and  worthy  of 
the  followers  of  that  sweet  and  omnipotent  deity  .  .  . 
He  becomes  a  supereminent  being,  and  as  such 
altogether  incomprehensible.  The  universe — the 
vast  universe,  no  longer  capable  of  bounding  his 
ideas,  his  affections,  vanishes  from  before  his  sight. 
The  soul  of  him  who  loves,  disdains  restraint — 
nothing  can  restrain  it.  It  lances  itself  out  of  the 
created,  and  creates  in  the  infinite  a  world  for  itself, 

215 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets    i 

and  for  itself  alone,  how  different  from  this  obscure 
and  fearful  den ! — is  in  the  continued  enjoyment  of 
the  sweetest  ecstasy,  is  truly  happy.  But  where  is 
he,  susceptible  of  such  love  ?  Where  ?  Who  is 
capable  of  inspiring  it  ?  Oh  love !  I  am  all 
love.  I  cannot  exist  without  love !  My  soul — 
my  mortal  frame — all  my  thoughts  and  affections, 
all  that  which  I  am,  transfigures  itself  into  one  sole 
sentiment  of  love,  and  that  sentiment  will  last 
eternally.  Without  Love,  life  would  become  to 
me  insupportable — the  world  an  inhospitable  and 
desolate  desert,  only  haunted  by  spectres,  so  terrible 
to  my  sight  that  to  fly  from  them,  I  could  cast 
myself  into  the  mysterious  abode  of  death.  .  .  . 

Love  has  no  wish  but  for  virtue — Love  inspires 
virtue — Love  is  the  source  of  actions  the  most 
magnanimous,  of  true  felicity — Love  is  a  fire  that 
burns  and  destroys  not,  a  mixture  of  pleasure  and 
of  pain,  a  pain  that  brings  pleasure,  an  essence, 
eternal,  spiritual,  infinite,  pure,  celestial. 

Early  in  January  Shelley  said  that  Emilia 
continued  to  enchant  him  infinitely.  In  the 
middle  of  the  month  he  told  Claire  that  she 
need  not  fear  ''  any  mixture  of  that  which  you 
call  love  "  in  his  affection.  By  the  middle  of 
February  he  was  sending  the  finished  poem, 
'*  Epipsychidion,"  to  his  publishers  with  the 
desire  that  it  should  not  be  considered  as  his 
own — ''  indeed,  in  a  certain  sense,  it  is  a 
production  of  a  portion  of  me  already  dead  "  ; 
and  that  it  was  being  written  during  January 
might  be  conjectured  from  his  mention  of  the 
Vita  Nuova  in  the  ''Advertisement,"  as  a  book 
216 


Poets  and    Friendly  Women 

he  was  reading  to  Mary  in  that  month.  At 
the  end  of  April  Shelley  heard  that  Emilia 
was  to  marry,  and  a  great  weight  would  thus 
be  taken  off  his  mind.  In  March  1822  Mary 
told  Mrs.  Gisborne  that  Emilia  was  married, 
and  ''we  hear  that  she  leads  him  and  his 
mother  (to  use  a  vulgarism)  a  devil  of  a  life  " 
— a  manner  of  expression  not  incompatible 
with  some  malice  on  her  part.  For  six  years, 
says  Medwin,  Emilia  led  a  life  of  purgatory, 
and  then  broke  the  chain  with  her  father's 
consent  and  retired  to  ''a  long  disused  and 
dilapidated  house  in  the  Mahremma  "  to  die. 
Practically  all  of  Shelley's  poetry,  and 
certainly  all  that  is  of  any  value,  was  written 
after  his  first  marriage,  nor  does  he  appear  to 
have  written  any  personal  love-poetry  before 
then.  But  it  was  in  1814,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two,  and  at  the  time  of  his  first  meet- 
ings with  Mary  that  Shelley's  individuality 
first  appeared  almost  without  alloy  in  poetry. 
This  clever  and  enthusiastic  girl  came  to  him 
at  a  time  of  stress,  and  accompanied  him  dur- 
ing the  sublime  but  tranquillising  hours  of 
his  wandering  through  France  and  his  retire- 
ment among  the  Alps.  She  was  like  the 
veiled  maid  in  '' Alastor"  of  whom  he  speaks 
exactly  as  he  spoke  to  Mary : 

Her  voice  was  like  the  voice  of  his  own  soul 
Heard  in  the  calm  of  thought. 

217 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

And  this  again  reminds  us  of  Shelley's  own 
words  about  a  boyish  friendship,  **  a  profound 
and  sentimental  attachment  to  one  of  the  same 
sex,"  which  ''  rejects  with  disdain  all  thoughts 
but  those  of  an  elevated  and  imaginative 
character '' ;  **  the  tones  of  his  voice,"  he  says, 
**  were  so  soft  and  winning  that  every  word 
pierced  into  my  heart ;  and  their  pathos  was 
so  deep,  that  in  listening  to  him  the  tears 
have  involuntarily  gushed  from  my  eyes." 

Like  that  maid  in  **Alastor"  Mary  could 
speak  to  him,  as  she  did  to  Hogg,  of  ''  Know- 
ledge and  truth  and  virtue.  .  .  ." 

And  lofty  hopes  of  divine  liberty, 
Thoughts  the  most  dear  to  him,  and  poesy. 

The  dedication  of  ''The  Revolt  of  Islam"  to 
Mary  acknowledges  the  debt — 

How  beautiful  and  calm  and  free  thou  wert 
In  thy  young  wisdom,  when  the  mortal  chain 
Of  custom  thou  didst  burst  and  rend  in  twain.  .  . . 

The  same  thought  less  substantially  expressed 
is  to  be  found  in  the  blank  verse  lines  ''To 
Harriet"  written  in  1812:  this  first  love 
gave  him  his  sense  of  eternity.  Mary  and 
the  "  serener  hour"  of  a  united  home  and 
friends  returned,  had  been  "the  parents  of 
the  song."  An  echo  of  this  praise  was 
sounded  in  the  words  of  Laon  : 
218 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

In  me,  communion  with  this  purest  being 
Kindled  intenser  zeal,  and  made  me  wise 

In  knowledge,  which,  in  hers  mine  own  mind 
seeing, 
Left  in  the  human  world  few  mysteries.  .  .  . 

and 

Thus,  Cythna  mourned  with  me  the  servitude 
In  which  the  half  of  humankind  were  viewed 
Victims  of  lust  and  hate,  the  slaves  of  slaves.  .  .  . 

and  in  Cythnas  own  w^ords,  varied  more 
than  once  in  later  cantos  : 

Can  man  be  free  if  woman  be  a  slave  ? 

On  the  practical  question  of  woman  suffrage 
two  years  later  he  was  doubtful,  but  said  that 
he  *' would  be  the  last  to  withhold  his  vote 
from  any  system  which  might  tend  to  an 
equal  and  full  development  of  the  capacities  of 
all  living  beings."  It  is  significant  that  the 
one  who  rears  *'the  torch  of  Truth  afar"  in 
this  poem  is  a  woman,  the  maiden  Cythna ; 
and  that  ''  chiefly  women "  answered  her 
strong  speech  that  tore  the  veil  from  *'  Nature 
and  Truth  and  Liberty  and  Love."  Mrs. 
Shelley  justly  remarked  in  her  note  that  for 
the  hero  nourished  in  dreams  of  virtue  *'  he 
created  a  woman  such  as  he  delighted  to 
imagine — full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  same 
objects  " — like  herself.  Women  there  can  be 
no  doubt  helped  to  sustain  the  long,  the  too 

219 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

long  soaring  flight  of  his  spirit,  footless  like 
a  bird  of  Paradise  ;  women  were  the  natural 
society  of  one  who  was  disgusted,  as  Mary- 
Shelley  says  he  was  by  Pecchiani,  at  the 
telling  of  ''a  dirty  story.'*  They  preserved 
for  him  that  belief  expressed  first  in  the 
words  of  Asia  : 

Common  as  light  is  love, 
And  its  familiar  voice  wearies  not  ever  .  .  . 
It  makes  the  reptile  equal  to  the  God. 

Even  his  Prometheus  is  half  a  woman  with 
his  love-speech  to  Asia  : 

We  will  entangle  birds  and  flowers  and  beams 
Which  twinkle  on  the  fountain's  brim,  and  make 
Strange  combinations  out  of  common  things, 
Like  human  babes  in  their  brief  innocence. 

He  reminds  us  of  Shelley's  memorable  com- 
bination of  *'meek  and  bold"  as  an  ideal  in 
the  dedication  to  "The  Revolt  of  Islam"  and 
*'  innocent  and  bold  "  in  *'  Epipsychidion/' 

With  Shelley  love  was  always  either  a 
winged  rapture  threatened  with  such  a  sudden 
end  as  the  bolt  that  pierced  the  brain  of  the 
eagle  in  the  "  Ode  to  Liberty,"  or  a  retreat  to 
an  Ionian  isle  as  in  the  letter  to  Mary  already 
quoted  and  in  "  Epipsychidion,"  or,  some- 
times in  combination  with  the  retreat,  a  union 
for  the  perfectibility  of  mankind  in  virtue  and 

220 


Poets  and   Friendly  Women 

beauty.  To  *'  faint "  with  love  is  a  common 
feature  of  his  poetry :  look,  for  example,  at 
the  phases  ''  I  die,  I  faint,  I  fail  " — *'  I  faint, 
I  perish  with  my  love" — "Faint  with  love, 
the  Lady  of  the  South."  In  the  same  way 
this  faintness  is  associated  with  colour  and 
fragrance,  as  in  the  *' azure  moss  and  flowers 
so  sweet  the  sense  faints  picturing  them,"  and, 
in  *'  Epipsychidion  "  : 

And  from  the  moss  violets  and  jonquils  peep, 
And  dart  their  arrowy  odour  throug-h  the  brain 
Till  you  might  faint  with  that  deHcious  pain. 

In  the  same  poem,  fragrance  is  associated 
with  love,  and  both  together  with  faintness 
in  : 

Warm  fragrance  seemed  to  fall  from  her  light  dress 
And  her  loose  hair  ;  and  where  some  heavy  tress 
The  air  of  her  own  speed  has  disentwined. 
The  sweetness  seems  to  satiate  the  faint  wind  ; 
And  in  the  soul  a  wild  odour  is  felt.  .   .   . 

In  ''  Madonna,  wherefore  hast  thou  sent  to 
me  "  he  says  definitely  that  he  is  one  '*  in 
whom  love  ever  made  health  like  a  heap  of 
embers  soon  to  fade." 

His  poems  were  either  written  at  the 
moment  of  intense  feeling  which  they  de- 
scribe or  with  such  ecstasy  as  to  revive  it, 
and  in  ''To  Constantia  singing"  (which  was 
for  Claire  Clairmont),  he  actually  says  : 

Even  while  I  write,  my  burning  cheeks  are  wet. . .  . 

221 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Asia s  '*  My  soul  is  an  enchanted  boat"  seems 
a  revival  of  this  same  inspiration.  But  it  is 
rare  for  his  love-poems  to  suggest  even  as 
much  as  this  one  the  woman  to  whom  it  is 
addressed,  nameless  or  not.  He  usually 
depicts  himself,  and  even  himself  in  such  a 
way  as  to  suggest  not  a  man,  but  rather  a 
spirit.  The  dedication  of  ''The  Revolt  of 
Islam"  stands  almost  alone  in  its  serious 
reference  to  the  intellectual  inspiration  of 
companionship.  ''Bird  thou  never  wert"  is 
true  not  of  his  skylark  alone.  Not  only  his 
"One  word  is  too  often  profaned"  narrates 
"  the  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star."  In 
"  Epipsychidion  "  he  is  lured  by  the  beloved 
"  towards  sweet  Death."  "  I  arise  from 
dreams  of  thee  "  ends  with  : 

My  cheek  is  cold  and  white,  alas ! 
My  heart  beats  loud  and  fast ; 
Oh !  press  it  to  thine  own  again 
Where  it  must  break  at  last. 

In  "We  meet  not  as  we  parted"  the  kiss 
of  love  is  "  the  death  which  a  heart  so  true 
sought  in  your  briny  dew." 

This  is  far  other  than  what  we  should  be 
led  to  expect  by  Mrs.  Shelley's  Preface,  where 
she  says  : 

Shelley  s  conception  of  love  was  exalted,  absorb- 
ing, allied  to  all  that  is  purest  and  noblest  in  our 
nature,  and  warmed  by  earnest  passion  ;  such  it 
222 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

appears  when  he  gave  it  a  voice  in  verse.  Yet  he 
was  usually  averse  to  expressing  these  feelings, 
except  when  idealised.  ... 

She  is  thinking  of  the  love  described  in 
^^A^lastor,"  **The  Revolt  of  Islam,"  "  Prome- 
theus Unbound,"  and  parts  of  ''  Epipsychi- 
dion."  There  Shelley  v^as  biassed  by  his 
view  of  vi^hat  love  might  be  or  ought  to  be, 
by  his  doctrine  that  '*to  divide  is  not  to  take 
avi^ay."  Where  he  sings  directly  in  the  first 
person  he  forgets  this :  he  expresses  the 
delirium  of  desire  or  of  despair.  Only  where 
he  writes  for  a  lady  who  is  to  see  the  poem, 
as  in  those  sent  to  Jane  Williams,  is  he 
turned  from  this  method  to  a  beautiful 
ceremonious  celebration  of  an  impassioned 
friendship.  Even  in  these  poems  the 
character  of  the  woman,  in  body  or  mind,  is 
barely  hinted  at.  In  the  poems  of  passion 
the  woman  is  invisible ;  the  emotion  is  every- 
thing ;  and  what  is  brought  before  us  is  the 
desire  of  a  man,  and  the  idea  of  woman 
rising  in  hesitating  reply.  Whether  an  indi- 
vidual woman  gave  the  impulse  to  the  best  of 
his  love-poems  or  not,  they  seem  hardly  meant 
for  mortal  flesh,  and  no  others  raise  so  little 
the  question  of  their  immediate  application  or 
lend  themselves  so  readily  to  another.  *'The 
Question"  has  almost  a  humorous  charm 
among  poems  of  this  class  ;  for  it  describes 

223 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

a  dream,  the  gathering  of  a  nosegay  of  flowers, 
and  then  the  hastening  to  a  spot  where  he 
might  present  it — ''Oh,  to  whom?"  This, 
however,  is  a  poem  rather  of  amorous  com- 
pliment than  of  passion.  But  of  those 
which  clearly  were  due  to  one  woman  and  to 
a  definite  situation,  it  is  remarkable  how 
many  are  obscure  like  ''  When  passion's 
trance,"  and  how  many  were  left  unfinished 
like  ''We  meet  not  as  we  parted." 

It  is,  perhaps,  not  in  place  to  say  much 
here  about  the  well-known  facts  of  Shelley's 
life,  and  above  all  the  fact  that  he  left  his 
first  wife  when  he  had  ceased  to  love  her  and 
went  off  with  Mary  Godwin,  and  that  in  his 
absence  Harriet  drowned  herself.  There  is 
nothing  else  to  be  said  against  Shelley  in  his 
relations  with  women,  unless  it  be  that  he 
caused  his  second  wife  some  days  of  unhappi- 
ness  and  suspicion  by  his  open  admission 
in  speech  and  writing  of  his  strong  likings 
for  other  women.  Mr.  Glutton  Brock,  his 
sober  critic,  points  out  that  "  Judged  by  the 
standard  of  ordinary  morality  he  comes  off  so 
well  that  no  one  need  fear  to  apply  it  to  him." 
But  even  he  falls  into  the  error  of  indicating 
at  certain  points  what  Shelley  might  have 
done  to  save  himself  and  others  from 
suffering.  He  imputes  it  as  a  fault  that 
Shelley  ceased  to  love  Harriet,  and  "could 
224 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

not  exercise  his  will  and  reason  to  maintain 
his  love  for  her."  I  do  not  think  that  any 
man  to-day  is  in  a  position  to  say  more  than 
that  in  this  or  that  case  he  acted  in  a  way 
which  was  disastrous :  I  do  not  believe  the 
poet  could  have  taken  the  critic's  posthumous 
advice  if  he  had  been  there  to  give  it,  or  even 
that  if  he  had  he  would  have  been  better  off. 
The  critic  admits  that  the  poet's  inability  to 
submit  to  routine  was  part  of  his  genius.  It 
was  like  fresh  air  to  him.  Take  it  away  and 
you  have  something  different — something 
good,  possibly  better,  but  not  Shelley. 
And  to  say  that  his  faults — e.g.  his  desertion 
of  Harriet — had  nothing  to  do  with  his  genius 
because  that  had  not  yet  discovered  itself,  is 
to  say  what  is  unlikely  and  cannot  be  proved  ; 
while  it  is  rash  to  imply  that  if  he  had  overcome 
his  dislike  of  Harriet,  used  ''a  little  sagacity,'' 
and  gone  on  living  with  her  (as  a  man  without 
energy  or  freshness,  or  a  man  who  was  never 
to  write  "  Epipsychidion,"  might  have  done), 
things  would  have  been  better  or  quite  well ; 
for  it  is  at  least  conceivable  that  both  Shelley 
and  Harriet  would  then  have  committed 
suicide.  The  case  has  been  dwelt  on  too 
much,  at  first  because,  though  it  may  have 
had  nothing  to  do  with  it,  it  was  followed  by 
Harriet's  miserable  death,  and  now  because 
it   has   became  a   sort   of  test   case   of   the 

p  225 


Feminine  Influence  on  the   Poets 

**  privileges  of  genius."  There  is  no  privilege 
in  these  matters  except  the  lack  of  conscience, 
and  Shelley  had  not  that.  The  desertion 
was  consistent  with  his  character,  and  so  far 
as  can  be  seen,  it  did  not  weaken  his  character 
nor  weigh  heavily  in  the  scale  against  the 
later  acts  of  his  life.  The  same  critic  offers 
similar  advice  to  Claire  Clairmont.  She 
might,  he  says,  ''have  been  happy  and  useful 
and  healthy  in  her  mind  if  she  had  married  a 
kind  and  sensible  husband  and  borne  him 
children."  She  might.  But  she  would  not 
by  any  means  certainly  have  been  more 
fortunate  if  she  had  understood  that  'Move 
which  begins  with  the  perception  of  loveli- 
ness is  a  mere  luxury,  unless  it  changes  into 
a  trained  habit ;  that  men  must  exercise  their 
will  to  make  it  that  ;  and  that  marriage 
is  intended  to  make  them  exercise  their 
will  in  that  way."  It  is  true  that  love  and 
marriage  so  regarded  by  a  severe  and  upright 
nature  may  lead  to  greater  happiness  or  a 
higher  life  than  passionate,  if  innocent, 
irregularity.  But  the  alternative  is  not  a 
perfect  but  an  ordinary  marriage,  such  as 
Mary  Shelley  forced  upon  their  Italian 
servant  and  their  maid,  which  was  anything 
but  fortunate.  It  has  also  to  be  remembered 
that  Shelley's  greatest  mistake  was  in  making 
an  ordinary  marriage  with  Harriet,  not  to 
226 


Poets  and  Friendly  Women 

gratify  her  instincts  and  appetite  but  to  do  a 
kindness  to  her;  and  that  one  of  his  most 
successful  acts  was  his  union  with  Mary, 
which  could  not  at  first  be  legitimised  as 
marriage. 


227 


Chapter  Eight:  The  Tenth  Muse 

THE  strength  of  various  poetical  con- 
ventions and  the  absence  of  bio- 
graphical materials  make  early 
poetry,  such  as  Chaucer's,  all  but  impervious 
to  this  our  curiosity.  All  that  we  know  is 
that  Chaucer  married  somewhere  between  the 
ages  of  twenty-six  and  thirty-four,  and  was 
unhappy  with  his  wife,  and  that  when  he  was 
forty  he  committed  the  offence  of  raptus 
which  may  have  been  rape  and  may  have  been 
abduction  for  purposes  of  gain.  As  a  poet  he 
adopts  in  one  place  or  another  almost  all  the 
conventional  and  traditional  views  of  women 
as  the  plague  of  men.  In  **  The  Legende  of 
Good  Women,"  therefore,  he  imagines  him- 
self accused  of  being  an  enemy  to  love  as  the 
translator  of  the  satirical  ''  Romance  of  the 
Rose "  and  the  creator  of  the  perfidious 
Cresyde,  and  that  poem  makes  polite  but 
not  convincing  amends  by  painting  ''women 
true  in  loving  all  their  lives  " — Cleopatra  the 
**  martyr"  for  whom  Antonius  thought  the 
world  well  lost ;  Lucrece  who  reminds  him  of 
what  Christ  said : 

Not  so  grata  faytha  in  al  that  londe  he 
Fonda  as  in  a  woman  ;  and  this  is  no  lya : 

and  Dido  whose  betrayal  makes  him  exclaim  : 
228 


The  Tenth  Muse 

O  sely  woman,  ful  of  innocence, 

Ful  of  pitee,  of  trouble,  and  conscience, 

What  maked  you  to  man  to  trusten  so  ? 

The  thought  in  this  last  line  is  varied  several 
times  in  his  poetry,  as : 

Beware  of  men  and  hearken  what  I  say, 

or  as  : 

Beware  ye  women  of  your  subtle  foe, 

and  is  his  one  concession  to  the  woman's 
point  of  view,  outside  of  the  words  of  the 
Wife  of  Bath.  She,  of  course,  knew  all  the 
proverbs  against  women  and  rolled  them  upon 
her  tongue,  m.aking  at  length  this  most 
pertinent  comment : 

By  God  !  if  wommen  hadd6  written  stories, 

As  clerke's  han  withinne  hire  oratories. 

They  wolde  han  writen  of  men  moore  wikkednesse 

Than  all  the  mark  of  Adam  may  redresse.  nj)^ 

That   he   loved   women   and   the   beauty  of  / 
women,  women  than  whom  there  was  never    ^^ 
creature  'Mess  mannish,"  there  is  no  doubt,   A^rj 
but  he  was  §o  pleased  with  what  the  French 
and  Latin  poets  had  said  of  them  before  him 
that   he   delighted   to   repeat  it   in  his  own 
tongue.  /  *'  Hyde,  Absolom,  thy  gilte  tresses 
clere-'with  its  burden  of  '*  My  lady  comith, 
that  al  this  may  disteyne "  is  a  compliment 
worthy   of  any   mistress,    but   whatever   its 

229 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

origin,  it  is  used  in  honour  of  the  God  of 
Love's  Queen.     He  paints  this  Queen,  too,  | 
in  words  which  would  so  honour  a  mortal 
woman    that   it    is   quite    certain    a    mortal 
woman  was   in  his  mind,  just   as  when  he 
drew  Dido,  so  young  and  lusty  with  her  glad 
eyes  that  if  God  would  have  a  love,  he  says, 
**whom  should  he  love  but  this  lady  sweet/' 
There,  at  least,  he  has  no  need  to  qualify  his 
words  with  "  as  I  have  heard  said,"  as  he 
does  when  he  makes  Dido  lie  awake  tossing 
about  in  bed  '*  as  do  these  lovers,  as  I  have 
heard   said."      It   sounds   a    little    scornful 
towards    *' these   lovers,"   and   yet  he  opens 
''  The  Death  of  Blanche  the  Duchess  "  with  a 
sleepless  night,  and  explains  that  he  cannot 
sleep    for    a   love-sickness    eight  years   old. 
He   is   to   lament   his    patroness,    Blanche, 
Duchess  of  Lancaster,  who  died  of  pestilence 
in  1369,  whom  Froissart  also  lamented.     No 
man  in  love  could  have  chosen  a  more  deli- 
cious method  of  enriching  his  sorrow  than  by 
the  device   of  making  the  mourning  Duke 
relate  how  he  first  met  the  beautiful  Blanche, 
and  how  he  made  a  song  for  her  : 

Lorde,  hyt  maketh  myn  herte  lyght 
Whan  I  thenke  on  that  swete  wyght 

That  is  so  semely  on  to  see ; 

And  wisshe  to  God  it  myght  so  bee 

That  she  wolde  holde  me  for  hir  knyght, 
My  lady  that  is  so  fair  and  bright ! 
230 


The  Tenth  Muse 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  John  of 
Gaunt  ever  told  Chaucer  how  he  courted 
Blanche  of  Lancaster ;  but  very  good  reason 
in  the  warmth  and  freshness  of  this  poem  to 
suppose  that  Chaucer  was  writing  of  his  own 
love,  possibly  with  the  hope  that  the  woman, 
whoever  it  was,  might  see  or  hear  the  poem. 
Of  all  the  poems  written  for  noble  patronesses, 
''  The  Death  of  Blanche  the  Duchess  "  is  one 
of  those  least  handicapped  by  its  purpose.  It 
retains  more  undeniable  evidence  of  love  than 
any  of  the  professed  love-poems  written  by 
Chaucer  or  ascribed  to  him. 

Some  of  the  most  delightful  of  John 
Skelton's  poems  were  ostensibly  written  for 
noble  ladies.  The  Countess  of  Surrey, 
mother  of  the  poet  Earl  of  Surrey,  was  one  of 
his  patrons  and  at  her  suggestion,  late  in  his 
life  (i46o[?]-i529)  a  garland  of  laurel  was 
presented  to  him  by  ten  ladies  at  Sheriff 
Hutton  Castle  in  Yorkshire.  He  replied  with 
a  poem  for  each — Lady  Elizabeth  Howard, 
Lady  Mirriell  Howard,  Lady  Anne  Dakers 
of  the  South,  Margery  Wentworth,  Margaret 
Tylney,  Jane  Blenner-Hasset,  Isabell  Pennell, 
Gertrude  Statham,  Isabell  Knyght,  and 
Margaret  Hussey.  The  poem  for  Mistress 
Margaret  Hussey  is  the  well-known 

Merry  Margaret 

As  midsummer  flower. 

231 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

That  for  Mistress  Isabell  Pennell  is  almost 
equally  worth  knowing  with  its  : 

Be  Saynt  Mary,  my  lady, 
Your  mammy  and  your  dady 
Brought  forth  a  godely  babi ! 
My  Mayden  Isabell  .  .  . 

Little  is  known  of  Skelton,  though  very 
much  was  rumoured,  and  he  became  a  ribald 
mythical  character  for  two  centuries  ;  but  it 
appears  that  when  he  was  a  parson  at  Diss 
he  lived  in  comfortable  concubinage  with  a 
woman  whom  he  made  the  mother  of  many 
children  and  afterwards  his  wife. 

The  Earl  of  Surrey,  son  of  Skelton's 
patroness,  was  one  of  the  first  English  poets 
to  take  his  own  or  his  professed  love  openly 
as  a  subject  of  poetry.  He  was  married  in 
1532,  when  about  sixteen,  to  Lady  Frances 
Vere,  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  but  his 
songs  and  sonnets  were  not  for  her.  Geraldine 
was  the  mistress  of  that  so-called  ''  affection 
of  the  imagination — the  daydream  of  an  ardent 
fancy,"  and  by  some  she  has  been  identified 
with  the  Lady  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Gerald, 
Earl  of  Kildare.  That  she  was  only  twelve 
years  old  and  the  daughter  of  a  powerful  earl  is 
the  objection  ;  but  it  need  not  have  been  such 
to  a  man  of  Surrey's  turbulent  and  imprudent 
character,  who  finally  went  to  the  scaffold 
232 


The  Tenth  Muse 

upon  a  charge  of  treasonably  painting  the 
arms  of  the  King  in  conjunction  with  his  own 
proper  arms,  and  wishing  to  be  held  heir  to 
the  Crown.  This  character,  indeed,  is  not 
wholly  consistent  with  the  portrait  of  himself 
as  a  lover  painted  in  his  poems,  wishing  for 
night  ''  more  covertly  to  plain  "  ;  probably  he 
was  prevented  from  any  direct  realism  by  the 
influence  of  Petrarch,  whom  he  translated. 
Only  two  of  the  poems  mention  Geraldine  by 
name,  and  there  is  no  indication  that  the  rest 
are  for  her,  but  the  objection  that  she  would 
not  have  been  the  subject  of  such  poems  by 
a  married  nobleman  may  be  overcome  by 
supposing  that  these  two,  perhaps  all  of  them, 
were  very  little  known  until  after  Surrey's  exe- 
cution in  1547;  they  were  not  printed  until  1557. 
Until  the  convention  of  these  and  other  such 
poems  is  so  thoroughly  mastered  that  we  are  no 
more  troubled  by  it  than  were  the  poet's  con- 
temporaries, or  than  we  are  by  to-day's  conven- 
tion, it  is  unfair  to  judge.  But  the  end  of 
''  When  Windsor  walls  sustain'd  my  wearied 
arm,"  where  he  recounts  how  he  half  bent  to 
throw  himself  down  in  grief,  and  the  lines 
where  he  says  that  his  lady  never  drew  aside 
her  hood  after  she  first  knew  his  grievous  love, 
would  be  some  evidence  for  an  underlying 
passion,  even  if  the  noble  lines  written  during 
imprisonment  at  Windsor  had  not  survived. 

233 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

There  he  tells  how  he  and  his  companions 
used  to  play  tennis  at  Windsor : 

With  dazzled  eyes  oft  we  by  gleams  of  love 
Have  miss'd  the  ball  and  got  sight  of  our  dame, 
To  bait  her  eyes,  which  kept  the  leads  above.  .  .  . 

and  how  they  made  the  secret  groves  resound 
Of  pleasant  plaint,  and  of  our  ladies'  praise. 

With  a  difference,  it  reminds  us  of  Shelley's 
recollection  of  his  boyish  friendship — 

We  used  to  speak  of  the  ladies  with  whom  we 
were  in  love,  and  I  remember  that  our  usual  practice 
was  to  confirm  each  other  in  the  everlasting  fidelity 
in  which  we  had  bound  ourselves  towards  them  and 
towards  each  other. 

But  it  is  not  known  that  Geraldine  was  at 
Windsor  then,  and  we  have  to  fall  back  upon 
the  unsatisfying  fact  that  the  poem  is  tinged 
with  love,  but  of  whom  we  do  not  know. 
Some  of  the  poems  at  least  are  dramatic 
lyrics ;  two,  for  example,  being  meant  to  ex- 
press the  thoughts  of  a  woman  whose  lover 
is  upon  the  sea.  What  Symonds  said  of 
**Astrophel  and  Stella"  may  also  be  said  of 
these ;  that  ''the  chosen  form  of  composition 
both  traditionally  and  artistically  lent  itself" 
to ''artistic  exaltation"  and  "poetical  exag- 
geration," though  "  poetical "  is  here  used  in 
a  base  and  vulgar  sense. 

234 


The  Tenth  Muse 

The  first  series  of  this  kind  which  has 
received  a  plausible  full  explanation  is 
"  Astrophel  and  Stella."  These  poems  were 
written  probably  in  158 1-2,  and  addressed  to 
Penelope  Devereux,  who  had  become  Lady 
Rich  in  1580  or  1581.  Sidney  had  first  met 
her  in  1575  when  he  was  twenty-one  and  she 
thirteen.  They  had  been  half  affianced  a 
little  later,  with  affection  on  her  side,  it  has 
been  supposed,  but  not  on  his.  At  any  rate 
1 58 1  was  the  year,  not  only  of  Stellas 
marriage  but  of  Sidney's  drawing  near  to 
Frances  Walsingham,  who  became  his  wife 
in  1583.  The  sonnets,  circulated  long  before 
Sidney's  death  in  1586,  but  not  published 
until  1 59 1,  suggest  few  acts  or  events, 
nothing  but  Astrophel's  addresses,  Stella's 
chaste  confession  of  love,  a  kiss,  and  a  quiet 
despair  and  farewell. 

Penelope,  it  was  said,  was  married  against 
her  will,  and  there  was  discord  between  her 
and  Lord  Rich  from  the  first  day.  Certain 
it  is  that  she  became  Sir  Charles  Blount's 
mistress,  bore  him  three  children,  and  became 
his  wife  in  1605,  after  being  divorced.  A 
knowledge  of  these  facts  is  probably  necessary 
to  an  interest  in  more  than  a  small  minority 
of  the  poems. 

There  is  no  external  evidence  for  or  against 
believing  that  the  sonnets  and  lyrics  were  all 

235 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

directly  connected  with  Sidney's  love  of 
Penelope  and  meant  for  her  eye.  It  is  more 
probable  that  his  passion  broke  forth  first 
upon  either  her  betrothal  or  her  marriage, 
and  that  this  was  the  occasion  of  his  begin- 
ning to  write  the  poems  of  the  series,  but 
that  once  he  had  begun  he  had  needed  a  fresh 
immediate  impulse  only  now  and  then.  His 
lips  are  sweet,  he  says,  ''  inspired  with  Stella's 
kiss  "  ;  and 

Stella,  think  not  that  I  by  verse  seek  fame  .   .  . 
If  thou  praise  not,  all  other  praise  is  shame. 

Over  and  over  again  he  avers  that  he  ''in 
pure  simplicity  breathes  out  the  flames  which 
burn  within  his  heart."  And  not  only  does  he 
attribute  his  writing  to  her  influence,  but  his 
moral  nature.  In  reply  to  a  friend  who  has 
grieved  him  by  saying  that  his  love  has 
plunged  his  soul  in  the  mire  of  sinful  thoughts, 
he  says : 

If  that  be  sin  which  doth  the  manners  frame, 
Well  staid  with  truth  in  word  and  faith  of  deed, 
Ready  of  wit,  and  fearino^  naught  but  shame  ; 
If  that  be  sin,  which  in  fixt  hearts  doth  breed 
A  loathing  of  all  loose  unchastity, 
Then  love  is  sin,  and  let  me  sinful  be. 

And  it  is  true  that  in  **Astrophel  and 
Stella"  Sidney  justifies  the  unique  opinion 
of  his  contemporaries  upon  his  character  and 
236 


The  Tenths  Muse 

poetry.  Compare  the  poems  in  ''Arcadia," 
and  how  few  of  them  are  equal  to  the  best  or 
second  best  of  '' Astrophel  and  Stella." 

In  some  we  of  to-day  can  see  nothing  but 
the  convention  surviving ;  yet  it  is  unjust  to 
call  even  these  **  merely  artificial."  All  are 
artificial,  with  an  even  texture  and  balanced 
form  which  probably  means  that  Astrophel 
is  already  independent  of  Stella,  but  some 
are  happily  contrived  and  some  are  not.  In 
fact  it  is  where  the  verse  is  most  obviously 
related  to  facts  that  it  offends  those  who,  like 
Symonds,  regard  some  as  ''  merely  artificial," 
where,  e.g.  Sidney  refers  to  Lord  Rich  with — 

Is  it  not  evil  that  such  a  devil  wants  horns  ? 

Yet  the  sonnet  describing  how  he  missed  a 
sight  of  her  on  a  wet  night,  and  the  lyric 
relating  to  his  temptation  and  her  refusal, 
**  No,  no,  no,  no,  my  dear,  let  be"  are  not  the 
poorest  of  the  series. 

There  were  times  when  Sidney  was  not  in- 
clined even  to  write  too  seriously  of  his  love, 
or  has  adopted  a  method  laying  him  open  to 
this  suspicion,  as  when  he  recommends  her 
to  think  of  his  case  as  she  thinks  of  lovers  in 
stories  and  weeps : 

Then  think,  my  dear,  that  you  in  me  do  read 
Of  lover  s  ruin  some  thrice-sad  tragedy. 
I  am  not  I  ;  pity  the  tale  of  me ! 

237 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Of  the  best  the  style  alone  is  enough  testi- 
mony to  their  inspiration — the  style  of  : 

Highway,  since  you  my  chief  Parnassus  be, 
And  that  my  Muse,  to  some  ears  not  unsweet, 
Tempers  her  words  to  trampling  horses'  feet 
More  oft  than  to  a  chamber  melody  .  .  . 

Not  unexpectedly  or  inexplicably  the  two 
sonnets  of  retrospection  or  farewell  are  nearly, 
if  not  quite,  the  finest.  All  is  over,  and  the 
past  contemned,  and  yet  he  must  speak  in 
the  very  tones  which  were  taught  him  by  the 
past  love. 

"^To  come  for  a  moment  to  Shakespeare,  it 
has  to  be  said  that  a  complete  silence  on  the 
subject  might  now  be  held  until  full  con- 
sideration has  been  given  to  Mr.  Frank 
Harris'  methods  and  results.  There  has  been 
no  other  Shakespearean  criticism^  equally 
stimulating,  and  Shakespeare  ought  to  be 
read  now  as  he  was  never  read  before.  Mr. 
Harris  believes  that  Shakespeare  **owes  the 
greater  part  of  his  renown  to  Mary  Fitton,'* 
the  licentious  Maid  of  Honour  to  Queen 
Elizabeth,  twice  a  mistress,  and  twice  a  wife, 
who  makes  a  very  suitable  original  for  the 
*'dark  lady"  of  the  sonnets:  **  it  was  her 
falseness  that  brought  him  to  self-knowledge 
and  knowledge  of  life."  Mr.  A.  C.  Bradley 
points  out  in  the  later  plays,  *'  Hamlet," 
238 


The  Tenth  Muse 

'^Measure  for  Measure,"  ** Othello,"  ^Troilus 
and  Cressida,"  ''  King  Lear,"  and  '*Timon,"  an 
undertone  of  disgust  concerning  the  vices  of 
**  drunkenness  and  sexual  corruption  "  ;  Mr. 
J.  M.  Robertson  notices  in  the  later  Shake- 
speare a  ''peculiarly  true  and  new  expression 
of  the  living  grace  of  womanhood,  always,  it 
is  true,  abstracted  to  the  form  of  poetry  and 
skilfully  purified  from  the  blemishes  of  the 
actual,  but  none  the  less  convincing  and 
stimulating"  :  but  both  are  inclined  to  attri- 
bute these  incompatible  different  qualities  to 
one  experience,  namely,  that  which  Mr.  Harris 
with  more  confidence  calls  his  love  and  lust 
for  Mary  Fitton.  Mr.  Harris  has  used  his 
admirable  method  and  intuition  with  perhaps 
an  excess  of  indulgent  pleasure,  but  he  estab- 
lishes beyond  assault  that  Shakespeare  owed 
very  much  to  the  passion  for  a  woman  when 
he  was  about  thirty,  and  that  this  passion  j 
is  the  one  which  inspired  the  later  sonnets,  j 
Mr.  Harris  is,  however,  needlessly  torrential 
in  dealing  with  the  sonnets  addressed  to  a 
man,  when  he  says  that  ''it  is  pose  and 
flunkeyism  and  the  hope  of  benefits  to  come, 
and  not  passion,"  that  inspired  them.  He 
seems  to  assume  that  the  only  form  of  passion 
and  inspiration  is  that  which  he  implies  when 
he  speaks  of  "panting"  Sappho  "gasping 
out"  when  "lust  had  made  her  body  a  lyre 

239 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

of  deathless  music/'  On  the  contrary  it  is 
not  reasonable  to  doubt  that  Shakespeare  was 
speaking  truth,  whether  discovered  by  him- 
self or  not,  when  he  wrote  (herein  agreeing 
with  Donne,  who  says  : 

Grief  brought  to  numbers  cannot  be  so  fierce, 
For  he  tames  it,  that  fetters  it  in  verse) 

O  absence,  what  a  torment  wouldst  thou  prove, 
Were  it  not  thy  sour  leisure  gave  sweet  leave 
To  entertain  the  time  with  thoughts  of  love  .  .  . 

and  that  love,  albeit  not  the  sting  of  instant 
desire,  brought  forth — 

When  in  the  chronicle  of  wasted  time 
I  see  descriptions  of  the  fairest  wights, 
And  beauty  making  beautiful  old  rhyme 
In  praise  of  ladies  dead  and  lovely  knights. 

Even  if  it  could  be  proved  that  there  was 
some  flunkeyism  in  Shakespeare's  attitude 
towards  Herbert,  the  sonnets  are  not 
flunkeyism.  What  is  amazing  about  *'  In 
the  old  age  black  was  not  counted  fair,"  and 
the  following  sonnets,  is  that  they  seem 
not  only  to  be  exquisitely  fit  for  the  utterance 
of  a  passion,  but  to  be  the  passion  itself,  or 
contemporaneous  with  it.  Never  was  aban- 
donment before  or  since  expressed  with  such 
concealment  of  the  art  that  we  might  suppose 
the  two  to  be  one,  the  art  and  the  abandon- 
ment. But  the  essential  condition  is  not 
240 


The  Tenth  Muse 

that  they  should  be  the  exact  reproduction  of 
a  passion,  but  that  they  should  be  approved 
as  a  fit  expression  of  one  by  men  ;  and  this 
they  fulfil  as  no  others  do. 

If  at  all  these  sonnets  are  to  be  equalled  by 
the  love-poems  of  Donne,  those  recreations  of 
his  youth  which,  according  to  the  incredible 
words  of  Walton,  were  written  before  he  was 
twenty.  Donne  w^as  ''by  nature  highly  pas- 
sionate, but  more  apt  to  reluct  at  the  excesses 
of  it,"  and  it  is  assumed  that  in  his  young  days 
at  home  and  abroad,  as  a  man  of  pleasure  and 
some  fortune,  he  gave  many  of  his  days  and 
nights  to  women.  The  feelings  in  many  of 
the  poems  attributed  to  this  period  are  not 
what  most  men  would  admit  to  be  love. 
*'  The  sun  rising,"  for  example,  with  its 
opening — 

Busy  old  fool,  unruly  sun, 
Why  dost  thou  thus, 
Through  windows,  and  through  curtains,  call 
on  us, 

has  none  of  the  passion  of  the  Provencal 
poet's  misery  ''that  day  should  come  so 
soon."  It  is  what  Mr.  Gosse  calls  it,  a 
"  hymn  of  sturdy  virile  satisfaction."  A  little 
more  passionate,  perhaps,  is  another  "  Break 
of  day  "  with  its  "  Love  which  in  spite  of  dark- 
ness brought  us  hither  should  in  despite  of 

Q  241 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

light  keep  us  together.**  In  one  of  his  songs 
Donne  says  that  there  is  no  woman  true  as 
well  as  fair  ;  not  only  so,  but  she  will  be 
false  *' to  two  or  three":  **  Woman's  Incon- 
stancy "  shows  him  matching  his  falseness 
with  hers  :  he  delights  to  sing : 

He  is  stark  mad>  whoever  says, 

That  he  hath  been  in  love  an  hour  .  .  . 

and  avers : 

The  loving  wretch  that  swears, 
*Tis  not  the  bodies  marry,  but  the  minds, 
Which  he  in  her  angelic  finds, 
Would  swear  as  justly,  that  he  hears. 
In  that  day's  rude  hoarse  minstrelsy,  the  spheres. 
Hope  not  for  mind  in  women  ;  at  their  best, 
Sweetness  and  wit  they  are,  but  mummy  possessed. 

It  is  of  the  essence  of  these  early  loves  that 
he  says : 

Makes  virtue  wom*an  ?     Must  I  cool  my  blood 
Till  I  both  be,  and  find  one,  wise  and  good  ? 
May  barren  angels  love  so. 

And  the  twentieth  elegy  is  the  finest  expres- 
sion of  his  enjoyment  of  the  body,  so  intense 
here  in  fact  that  he  is  not  so  far  removed  as 
he  appears  from  that  lover  who  *'  could  not 
see  her  body  for  her  soul " :  its  title  is 
**  To  his  mistress  going  to  bed  *'  and  its 
conclusion  : 
242 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Full  nakedness !     All  joys  are  due  to  thee  : 

As  souls  unbodied,  bodies  unclothed  must  be 

To  taste  whole  joys.     Gems  which  you  women  use 

Are  like  Atalanta's  ball  cast  in  men's  views  ; 

That  when  a  fools  eye  lighteth  on  a  gem, 

His  earthly  soul  might  court  that,  not  them. 

Like  pictures,  or  like  books'  gay  coverings  made 

For  laymen,  are  all  women  thus  array 'd. 

Themselves  are  only  mystic  books,  which  we 

— Whom  their  imputed  grace  will  dignify — 

Must  see  reveal'd.     Then,  since  that  I  may  know, 

As  liberally  as  to  thy  midwife  show 

Thyself;  cast  all,  yea,  this  white  linen  hence  ; 

There  is  no  penance  due  to  innocence  : 

To  teach  thee,  I  am  naked  first ;  why  then, 

What  needst  thou  have  more  covering  than  a  man  ? 

If  this  were  only  the  insolence  of  libertinism 
o  a  passive  instrument,  it  would  not  be 
urprising  that  Donne  should  ''  reluct  at  the 
excesses  of  it  "  ;  but  mere  libertinism,  even  if 
illied  to  genius,  would  be  more  likely  to 
:ontent  itself  with  deeds  not  words,  to  be 
oUowed  by  the  ferocity  of  repentance  and  by 
lackcloth  upon  the  body,  ashes  on  the  head 
ind  in  the  mouth  ;  and  although  Donne  may 
lave  condescended  to  please  Walton  by 
touting  the  early  poems,  he  never  went  back 
ipon  them  in  writing  or  action,  but,  whatever 
le  did,  did  it  to  excess  and  to  the  astonish- 
nent  and  confusion  of  the  many. 

There  is  another  class  of  love-poems 
ncluding  those  which  were  certainly  written 

243 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

for  his  wife,  but  many  more  on  which  bio- 
graphers can  throw  not  even  a  marsh  light. 
To  this  class  belongs  the  **  Ecstasy,"  a 
picture  of  two  lovers  with  hands  engrafted  : 

Our  souls — which  to  advance  their  state, 
Were  gone  out — hung  'twixt  her  and  me. 

And  whilst  our  souls  negotiate  there 

We  like  sepulchral  statues  lay  ; 
All  day,  the  same  our  postures  were, 

And  we  said  nothing,  all  the  day. 

This  ecstasy  teaches  them  that  it  is  not  sex 
which  they  love  ;  that  their  senses  are  not 
'*  dross  to  us  but  alloy  "  ;  and  lastly  that — 

Love's  mysteries  in  souls  do  grow, 
But  yet  the  body  is  his  book. 

This  is  the  same  love  as  in  ''  His  Picture  "  : 

Here  take  my  picture ;  though  I  bid  farewell, 
Thine,   in  my  heart,  where  my  soul  dwells,  shall 

dwell. 
*Tis  like  me  now,  but  I  dead,  'twill  be  more. 
When  we  are  shadows  both,  than  'twas  before. 
When  weatherbeaten  I  come  back  ;  my  hand 
Perhaps  with  rude  oars  torn,  or  sunbeams  tann'd  .  . 

When,  says  the  poem,  the  fools  tax  her  for 
loving  such  a  one,  the  picture  shall  say  what 
he  was,  and  she  shall  say — 

Do  his  hurts  reach  me  ?  doth  my  worth  decay  ? 
Or  do  they  reach  his  judging  mind,  that  he 
Should  now  love  less,  what  he  did  love  to  see  ? 

244 


The  Tenth  Muse 

That  which  in  him  was  fair  and  delicate, 
Was  but  the  milk,  which  in  love's  childish  state 
Did  nurse  it ;  who  now  is  grown  strong  enough 
To  feed  on  that,  which  to  weak  tastes  seems  tough. 

This  love,  it  may  be  seen,  has  little  to  do 
with  Petrarch,  little  to  do  with  Cupid.  If 
there  is  anything  but  subtlety  in 

I  never  stoop'd  so  low,  as  they 

Which  on  an  eye,  cheek,  lip,  can  prey  .  .  . 

it  must  be  an  expression  of  the  inexpressibility 
of  love,  the  craving  for  he  knows  not  what, 
which  is  beyond  sense  and  understanding. 
In  ''The  Expostulation"  he  lets  us  see  still 
a  little  more  of  the  woman,  and  gives  his 
love  humanity  by  giving  it  a  locality,  when 
speaking  of — 

Those  times  when  first  I  saw 
Love  in  your  eyes,  that  gave  my  tongue  the  law 
To  like  what  you  liked  ;  and  at  masks  and  plays 
Commend  the  self-same  actors,  the  same  ways.  .  .  . 

Whether  his  wife  or  not,  it  was  this  woman 
perhaps  who  taught  him  the  language  he  used 
afterwards  in  praising  the  dead  girl,  Elizabeth 
Drury,  whom  he  had  never  known — 

One,  whose  dear  body  was  so  pure  and  thin, 
Because  it  need  disguise  no  thought  within  ; 
'Twas  but  a  through-light*  scarf  her  mind  to  enroll, 
Or  exhalation  breathed  out  from  her  soul  .  .  . 

*  Through-light  —  translucent. 

245 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

**  The  ReHque  "  dwells  upon  the  day  when  his 
body  may  be  disinterred  to  admit  another  to 
his  grave  and  men  will  see 

A  bracelet  of  bright  hair  about  the  bone — 

and  *'all  women  shall  adore  us  and 
some  men " ;  and  these  verses  shall  teach 
them  *'what  miracles  we  harmless  lovers 
wrought "  : 

First  we  loved  well  and  faithfully, 
Yet  knew  not  what  we  loved,  nor  why ; 
Difference  of  sex  we  never  knew. 
No  more  than  guardian  angels  do  ; 
Coming  and  going  we 
Perchance   might   kiss,    but    not   between    those 
meals  ; 
Our  hands  ne'er  touch'd  the  seals. 
Which  nature,  injured  by  late  law,  sets  free. 
These  miracles  we  did  ;  but  now  alas  ! 
All  measure,  and  all  language,  I  should  pass, 
Should  I  tell  what  a  miracle  she  was. 

One  of  the  rare  qualities  of  this  poetry  is 
that  the  woman  is  apparently  the  man's  equal. 
Her  love  is  not  sought ;  it  has  already  been 
gained  ;  yet  it  stands  the  test  and  the  poet 
suggests  her  to  us  as  a  companion  of  perfect 
intimacy,  and  as  far  as  can  be  imagined  from 
the  prostituted  wife  of  his  epithalamion, 
who 

At  the  bridegroom's  wish'd  approach  doth  He, 
Like  an  appointed  lamb,  when  tenderly 
The  priest  comes  on  his  knees,  to  embowel  her. 

246 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Those  which  are  or  may  be  poems  of 
marriage  have  to  wait  until  our  own  day  to 
find  worthy  companions  in  Browning's  **  One 
word  more  "  and  William  Morris's  **  Message 
of  the  March  Wind." 

Herrick  is  the  best  example  among  English 
poets  of  the  man  of  whom  nothing  is  known 
except  his  poetry.  The  only  facts  beyond  a 
few  dates  such  as  the  year  of  his  birth,  1591, 
and  death,  1674,  are  that  he  was  Vicar  of 
Dean  Prior  in  Devonshire,  whence  he  was 
ejected  in  1647,  ^^  be  restored  at  the  Restora- 
tion. It  is  possible  that  he  was  father  to  the 
illegitimate  child  of  Thomasen  Parsons,  other- 
wise remembered  as  the  recipient  of  a  couplet 
in  ''  Hesperides."  He  was  probably  never 
married,  and  for  some  time  a  sister-in-law, 
the  widow  of  a  brother,  kept  house  for  him. 
He  made  a  poem  upon  the  occasion,  saying 
he  would  never  take  a  wife  to  ''crucify  his 
life  but 

A  sister  (in  the  stead 

Of  wife)  about  I'll  lead  ; 

Which  I  will  keep  embraced, 

And  kiss,  and  yet  be  chaste." 

It  is  characteristic  of  him  to  insist  that  the 
relation  was  to  be  chaste.  He  says  that, 
though  his  muse  was  ''jocund,"  his  life  was 
"chaste,"  and,  again,  that  chaste  he  lived 
without  a  wife.     This  may  be  literally  true, 

247 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

whether  or  not  the  reason  was  one  which  he 
would  have  liked  published.     He  is  gross  and 
physical,  possibly  because  the  terms  which  he 
uses  have  not  the  same  reality  for  him  as  for 
others.     It  was,  perhaps,  easy  for  him  to  be 
**  wisely  wanton  "  or  ''  cleanly  wanton  "  as  he 
puts  it.    Literature,  Greek,  Latin  and  English, 
would  have  given  him  nine-tenths   of  what 
he  says  of  women.     In  fact  he  repeats  most 
things  which  have  been  said  of  them,  from 
which   we   might   conclude   that    he    meant 
nothing.     The  rest  is  his  own.    It  is  Herrick 
himself  who   writes   of  women   as    if    theyj 
were  flowers,   or   even   as    if  they  were   no* 
more    animate    than    their   scented   clothes. 
It  is   Herrick  himself  who  likes  to  think  of 
his    *'  mistresses  *'   about   his   dead   body  as 
another  man  might  wish  for  flowers.    For  us 
there  is  something  perfectly  congruous  with 
all    this    in    the   portrait   which    his    recent 
biographer,  Mr.  Moorman,  thinks  a  caricature, 
saying,  *' We  may,  perhaps,  accept  the  lustrous 
eye,  the  thick,  tight  curls  and   the   curious 
beak-like  nose  which  calls  to  mind  the  busts 
of    the    Emperor   Vespasian  ;    but    the    fat 
stolidity  of  the  rest  of  the  face,  together  with 
the  grotesque  neck,  leaves  us  incredulous  or 
indignant." 

We  need  not  be  either  incredulous  or  in- 
dignant. We  may  picture  him  a  little  big 
248 


The  Tenth   Muse 

man,  a  coarse  man  with  a  shrill  voice  and 
moist  lips,  smiling  much  and  liking  to  talk 
about  women  but  caring  little  for  them. 
There  is  a  dainty  unreality  in  what  he 
says  of  them  which  becomes  laughable  and 
grotesque  in  a  poem  like 

Some  ask'd  me  where  the  rubies  grew, 

And  nothing  did  I  say : 
But  with  my  finger  pointed  to 

The  lips  of  Julia. 
Some  ask'd  how  pearls  did  grow,  and  where  ; 

Then  spoke  I  to  my  girl, 
To  part  her  lips,  and  show'd  them  there 
Two  quarrelets  of  Pearl. 

This  calls  into  our  mind  a  vision  of  the  stout 
man  actually  telling  '*  his  girl "  to  part  her 
lips  and  show  her  teeth  to  the  gentlemen. 
However  exquisite  he  is,  he  is  not  more  real. 
However  obscene  he  is,  it  is  not  with  the 
obscenity  of  Nature.  No  more  wonderful 
proof  of  the  power  of  style  can  be  found  than 
the  survival  of  the  work  of  this  trivial  vicar, 
the  author  of  ''  To  Dianeme  "  : 

Sweet,  be  not  proud  of  those  two  eyes 
Which,  starlike,  sparkle  in  their  skies ; 
Nor  be  you  proud  that  you  can  see 
All  hearts  your  captives,  yours  yet  free ; 
Be  you  not  proud  of  that  rich  hair 
Which  wantons  with  the  love-sick  air ; 
Whenas  that  ruby  which  you  wear. 
Sunk  from  the  tip  of  your  soft  ear. 
Will  last  to  be  a  precious  stone 
When  all  your  world  of  beauty's  gone. 

249 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

No  one  has  yet  come  to  any  certain  con- 
clusion as  to  the  relation  between  strict  truth 
and  Herrick's  statements  in  verse.  Some- 
times his  verses  relate  to  proved  facts  ;  usually 
there  is  no  evidence,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
while  composing  the  poet  was  histrionic, 
acting  parts,  and  making  others  act  parts, 
which  often  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with 
reality.  It  is  quite  possible  that  he  would 
make  a  poem  out  of  another  poet's  thought 
for  no  other  reason  than  his  enjoyment  of 
that  thought,  and  a  pretty  fancy  about  women 
or  a  woman  would  be  sufficient  for  the  inven- 
tion of  a  Perenna  or  Perilla  to  whom  to 
dedicate  that  fancy. 

Some  idea  of  his  independence  of  external 
experience  may  be  gathered  from  the  title  of 
one  poem :  *'  Charge  to  his  supposed  wife 
when  he  travelled."  It  is  an  absurd  poem, 
begging  this  supposed  wife  to  be  faithful  in 
his  absence,  telling  her  : 

I  am  not  jealous  of  thy  faith, 
Or  will  be,  for  the  axiom  saith  : 
He  that  doth  suspect  doth  haste 
A  gentle  mind  to  be  unchaste. 

And  yet  he  goes  on  to  say : 

Banish  consent,  and  'tis  no  sin 
Of  thine  ;  so  Lucrece  fell  and  the 
Chaste  Syracusian  Cyane. 

250 


The  Tenth  Muse 

So  Medullina  fell  ;  yet  none 

Of  these  had  imputation 

For  the  least  trespass,  'cause  the  mind 

Here  was  not  with  the  act  combined. 

When  Herrick  attempts  to  do  more  than  sing 
he  usually  is  absurd. 

His  task  was  to  write  lyrics  for  marionettes. 

j  His  *'  fresh  and  fragrant  mistresses "  are 
marionettes.  They  bear  no  resemblance  to 
real  women,  and  no  man  could  write  of  real 

j  women  so,  at  least  without  making  them  or 
himself  either  contemptible  or  ridiculous. 
Although  he  was  a  gross-looking  man,  with 
a  thick  neck,  a  big  beak,  and  abundance  of 
curly  hair,  his  nature  was  diminutive.  He 
liked  little,  delicate  things,  and,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  he  created  images  of  little 
things.  How  small  and  frail  a  thing  he 
makes  even  himself  appear  in  '*  To  Robin 
Redbreast  "  : 

Laid  out  for  dead,  let  thy  last  kindness  be. 
With  leaves  and  moss-work  for  to  cover  me. 
And  while  the  wood-nymphs  my  cold  corse  inter, 
Sing  thou  my  dirge,  sweet- warbling  chorister ! 
For  epitaph,  in  foliage,  next  write  this  : 
Here,  here,  the  tomb  of  Robin  Herrick  is. 

This  is  in  every  way  a  miniature,  and 
thoroughly  characteristic.  Another  good 
example  is  *'  To  the  Little  Spinners,"  an 
address  to  spiders  which  might  have  come 

251 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

from  a  creature  no  bigger  than  they.  It  is 
no  wonder,  then,  that  he  is  perfect  in  writing 
of  flowers.  One  of  the  few  poems  where  his 
sadness  seems  more  than  a  mincing  simula- 
tion is  the  ''  Divination  by  a  Daffodil "  : 

When  a  daffodil  I  see 
Hanging  down  his  head  towards  me, 
Guess  I  may  what  I  must  be: 
First,  I  shall  decline  my  head ; 
Secondly,  I  shall  be  dead  ; 
Lastly,  safely  buried. 

Flowers  are  nearer  in  stature  and  nature  to 
his  spirit  than  women,  and  that  daffodil 
meant  more  than  Anthea,  though  he  writes 
to  her  : 

If,  dear  Anthea,  my  hard  fate  it  be 
To  live  some  few  sad  hours  after  thee, 

and  so  on.  In  women  he  liked  the  white 
teeth,  the  cherry  lips,  the  creamy  skin,  the 
dark  eyes,  as  he  might  like  fruits  or  cakes. 
They  are  all  tiny,  childish  things,  and  at  their 
best  when  he  compares  them  with  flowers.  . 
He  does  not  treat  them  seriously,  and  he  | 
talks  to  a  mother — Lady  Crew — as  if  she 
would  be  willing,  like  the  poet,  to  regard  her 
dead  child  as  a  flower  "  hid  here  to  spring 
again  another  year."  In  *'  To  Primroses 
filled  with  Morning  Dew  "  he  calls  the  flowers 
''sweet  babes."  There  is,  for  him  at  least, 
252 


The  Tenth  Muse 

some  truth  in  the  verses  describing  how 
*'  frolic  virgins  "  became  pansies.  When  he 
writes  upon  a  dead  child,  ''a  pretty  bud,"  he 
says  that  it  was  *' lately  made  of  flesh  and 
blood  "  ;  and  to  him  it  really  seems  to  have 
become  a  flower,  without  the  grossness  of 
humanity  and  mortality.  If  the  poem  '*  upon 
a  lady  that  died  in  childbed  and  left  a  daughter 
behind  her  "  relates  to  the  death  of  any  one 
known  to  him,  it  is  an  extraordinary  revela- 
tion of  his  character,  concluding  as  it  does  : 

The  mother's  power 
Lives  in  the  pretty  lady-flower. 

No  wonder  that  one  thus  inapprehensive  of 
the  physical  facts  of  life  could  be  so  fearless 
and  shameless,  when  he  wrote  of  them,  that 
a  lady  should  say  to  him  in  a  dream  : 

Herrick,  thou  art  too  coarse  to  love. 

It  is  not  easy  to  explain  this  mingling  of 
coarseness  and  delicacy,  except  by  saying 
that  the  coarseness  is  in  us,  and  in  our  view 
of  facts  which  he  transmuted  for  himself  by 
his  own  miniature  delicacy. 

If  only  we  knew  as  much  of  Herrick  as 
Aubrey  tells  us  of  Sir  John  Suckling  !  He 
is  remembered  now  chiefly  as  the  author  of 
**Why  so  pale  and  wan,  fond  lover?"  and 
of  that  ''  Ballad  upon  a  Wedding,"  where  the 

253 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

bride's  feet  beneath  her  petticoat  'Mike  little 
mice  stole  in  and  out,"  and  her  lower  lip  was 
so  full  and  red  that  (surely)  "some  bee  had 
stung  it  newly."  The  fact  is  that  he  wrote 
very  little  else  which  can  be  read  by  a  man 
nowadays  in  his  capacity  of  a  human  being. 

Born  in  1609  and  dead  in  1642  he  professed 
to  live  for  pleasure  and  to  despise  all  else. 
He  even  professed  some  contempt  for  the 
writing  of  poetry.  In  his  lively  ''Session  of 
the  Poets,"  where  Apollo  sits  in  judgment  upon 
the  Jacobean  and  Caroline  poets,  Suckling 
was  called : 

But  did  not  appear, 
But  strait  one  whisper'd  Apollo  i'  th'  ear, 
That  of  all  men  living  he  cared  not  for  't, 
He  loved  not  the  Muses  so  well  as  his  sport ; 
And  prized  black  eyes,  or  a  lucky  hit 
At  bowls,  above  all  the  trophies  of  wit. 

He  died  soon  after  he  was  thirty,  and  as  he 
lived  the  life  of  a  gentleman,  a  courtier,  and  a 
soldier,  it  meant  considerable  activity  to  write 
four  plays,  a  quantity  of  lyrics,  and  a  prose 
"Account  of  Religion  by  Reason."  His 
contempt  was  a  public  vanity.  In  private  he 
wrote  according  to  his  ability,  and  the 
exquisite  format  of  one  of  his  plays  was 
conspicuous  enough  to  be  lampooned.  He 
bought  all  the  dresses  for  the  performance 

254 


The  Tenth  Muse 

himself ;  no  tinsel,  all  the  lace  pure  gold  and 
silver. 

Suckling  might  well  have  felt  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five  that  a  song  was  a  trifle  compared 
with  the  life  he  could  lead  among  men.  His 
life  was,  as  Milton  said  a  poet's  life  should  be, 
a  poem — a  brilliant  lyric  poem,  but  with 
flaws,  and  with  a  strange,  sudden  end.  The 
half-dozen  pages  on  Suckling  in  Aubrey's 
"  Brief  Lives  "  are  almost  the  most  fascinat- 
ing in  that  book.  Like  Donne  he  went  early 
to  the  university,  and  by  the  time  he  was 
'  eighteen  he  had  been  several  years  at  Cam- 
bridge and  had  travelled  over  much  of 
Europe.  He  came  back  **  an  extraordinary 
accomplished  gentleman,"  and  was  noted  for 
being  wittiest  when  most  provoked.  He  was 
the  greatest  gallant  and  gamester  of  his  time. 
His  sisters  came  crying  to  the  bowling-green 
for  fear  lest  he  should  lose  all  their  portions. 
When  he  had  bad  luck  he  would  dress 
himself  in  his  finest  clothes,  saying  that 
it  exalted  his  spirits,  and  that  he  had  the 
best  luck  when  he  was  most  gallant.  In 
1639  he  raised  a  troop  of  a  hundred  very 
handsome  young  men  to  join  the  expedition 
into  Scotland.  They  were  clad  in  white 
doublets,  scarlet  breeches,  coats  and  hats, 
and  contrasting  feathers,  and  they  were  well 
horsed  and  armed,  so  as  to  be  one  of  the 

255 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

finest  sights  of  the  day.  This  vainglory 
brought  another  lampoon,  which,  says 
Aubrey,  alleged  **  an  inglorious  charge  against 
the  Scots."  Suckling's  personal  courage  has 
been  impugned,  and  it  is  said  that  he  and 
several  others  set  upon  Sir  John  Digby  out- 
side a  theatre,  and  that  all  were  repulsed  by 
one  sword.  Whatever  was  the  truth  of  the 
matter,  he  was  much  rallied  over  it  afterwards 
by  ladies  of  his  acquaintance.  Aubrey  men- 
tions a  magnificent  and  costly  entertainment 
which  he  gave  to  a  great  number  of  young 
and  beautiful  ladies  of  quality  in  London. 
It  sounds  characteristic  of  Suckling.  He 
provided  ''all  the  rareties  that  this  part  of 
the  world  could  afford,  and  the  last  service 
of  all  was  silk  stockings  and  garters,  and  I 
think  also  gloves."  When  Strafford  was  in 
the  Tower,  Suckling  joined  the  plot  for  res- 
cuing him.  He  fled  to  France,  and  there, 
according  to  Aubrey,  was  reduced  to  poverty 
and  took  poison.  Others  say  that  a  man- 
servant killed  him  by  placing  an  open  razor 
in  his  boot.  He  died  a  bachelor,  a  man  of; 
middle  stature  and  not  strong,  a  brisk  roun( 
eye,  reddish  face  and  dyspetic  red  nose,  sandy- 
coloured  hair,  a  beard  naturally  turned  upj 
"  so  that  he  had  a  brisk  and  graceful  look." 

In  spite  of  the  impudent  cynicism  of  some 
poems,  and  even  on  account  of  it,  there  is 
256 


The  Tenth  Muse 

jood  reason  to  think  that  he  took  himself 
md  others,  and  especially  women,  more 
seriously  than  he  protested.  If  he  were 
vv^orth  it,  there  is  as  much  unsolved  mystery 
and  as  strange  a  tale  hidden  in  his  poems 
as  in  Shakespeare's  sonnets.    He  announced  : 

A  quick  corse,  methinks,  I  spy 
In  ev'ry  woman 
and 

Women  enjoy 'd  (whatever  before  th'  have  been) 
Are  like  romances  read. 

Yet  his  **  last  remains  "  include  both  poems 
and  letters  which  seem  to  give  the  lie  to  his 
shallow,  jaunty  callousness  and  weariness. 
The  series  of  poems  and  letters  connected  by 
Mr.  Thompson  with  one  of  the  Bulkeleys  of 
Beaumaris  Castle  are  full  of  devotion  and 
delicate  expression.  He  said  it  was  not  love, 
but  constancy,  that  harmed  a  man,  and  wrote 
the  poem : 

Out  upon  it !  I  have  lov'd 
Three  whole  days  together  ; 

And  am  like  to  love  three  more, 
If  it  prove  fair  weather — 

He  concluded  his  natural  and  spirited  **  Ballad 

on  a  wedding  "  with  the  usually  suppressed 

stanza : 

At  length  the  candle's  out ;  and  now 

All  that  they  had  not  done  they  do : 

What  that  is,  who  can  tell  .-* 

R  257 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

But  I  believe  it  was  no  more 
Than  thou  and  I  have  done  before 
With  Bridget  and  with  Nell. 

He  wrote  a  song  for  the  careless  lover — 
Ere  I'll  die  for  love,  Til  fairly  forego  it. 

He  made  a  poem  '*  against  fruition,"  full  of 
w^isdom,  concluding : 

Then,  fairest  mistress,  hold  the  power  you  have. 
By  still  denying  what  we  still  do  crave ; 
In  keeping  us  in  hopes  strange  things  to  see 
That  never  were,  nor  are,  nor  e'er  shall  be. 

Such  poems,  I  suppose,  he  wrote  par- 
ticularly for  men,  as  he  wrote  for  himself, 
or  for  women,  the  lines  **  Upon  L.  M. 
weeping  " — 

Whoever  was  the  cause  your  tears  were  shed. 
May  these  my  curses  light  upon  his  head  .  .  . 

or  the  song  **When,  dearest,  I  but  think  of 
thee."  In  his  private  letters  to  a  woman  he 
calls  her  '*  dear  princess  "  and  signs  himself, 
like  any  other  lover,  ''  Madam,  during  life, 
your  humblest  servant,"  and  his  prose  runs 
into  blank  verse  in  its  excitement ;  writing  to 
a  man,  he  offers  various  cures  for  love,  such  as 
*'a  jolly  glass  and  right  company,"  incon- 
tinence, or  marriage.  Was  the  cause  of  his 
too  extravagant  libertinism  and  cynicism  what 
258 


The  Tenth  Muse 

le   almost   said  it   was,    in   ''The  Guiltless 
,  nconstant  "  ? — 

My  first  love,  whom  all  beauties  did  adorn, 
Firing  my  heart,  supprest  it  with  her  scorn  ; 
Since  like  the  tinder  in  my  breast  it  lies, 
By  every  sparkle  made  a  sacrifice.  .  .  . 

It  is  not  perfectly  certain  that  these  letters 
.nd  poems  to  his  '*  dearest  princess,  Aglaura," 
/ere  founded  upon  a  deep  and  undivided 
►assion,  but  only  that  he  did  in  private 
ondescend  to  use  terms  belonging  to  that 
^ery  convention  of  love  w^hich  he  scoffed  at. 
The  admirable  letter  to  Falkland  and  the 
erious  essay  on  religion,  written  with  the 
lelp  of  '*  a  cartload  of  books,"  add  further 
ouches  to  the  character  of  a  man  whose 
)irth  and  position  and  accomplishments 
i.lso  remind  us  of  Byron.  There  is  no 
vidence  for  the  chronological  arrangement 
)f  poems  or  letters,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
ell  whether  the  flouting  poems  belong  to  an 
arly  or  a  late  period,  or  to  both.  The 
ynical  poems  belong  to  his  age,  the  serious 
o  himself.  They  suggest  a  society  where 
vomen  were  over-flattered  and  under-valued, 
md  their  sentiments  are  those  which  young 
hen,  probably  in  all  ages,  feel  called  upon  to 
ixpress  in  the  convivial  company  of  many 
equals  and  no  friends. 

I  259 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Thomas  Carew,  a  friend  of  Suckling  and 
ten  years  older,  belonged  to  the  same  class  as 
man  and  poet.  He  was  a  man  of  incontinent 
life,  and  according  to  his  contemporaries  was 
heavily  rewarded  for  his  amours.  As  Suck- 
ling was  charged  with  cowardice  and  cheating 
at  cards,  so  Carew  was  charged  with  slander- 
ing Lady  Carleton  and  Sir  Dudley  Carleton, 
English  ambassador  at  Venice,  to  whom  he 
was  secretary.  He  never  married,  but  seems 
to  have  had  at  one  time  in  view  "an  old 
galiasse  of  sixty-three,"  a  widow.  He  died 
at  about  fifty  *'with  the  greatest  remorse  for 
that  license  and  with  the  greatest  manifesta- 
tions of  Christianity  that  his  best  friends 
could  desire." 

A  number  of  his  poems  are  addressed  to 
*'  Celia,"  and  Mr.  Arthur  Vincent  thinks  them 
all  meant  for  a  mistress  met  when  he  was 
under  twenty-five  and  before  he  went  to 
France  with  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury.  He 
says  himself  that  no  fair  woman  can  come 
near  him  but  he  courts  her.  He  has  also  a 
poem  in  which  he  says  that  fortune,  honour, 
long  life,  children,  friends,  or  a  good  wife, 
are  nothing  to  ''a  wench  about  thirteen, 
already  voted  to  the  queen  of  lust  and  lovers." 
Suckling's  poem  "  Upon  my  Lady  Carlisle's 
walking  in  Hampton  Court  Gardens  "  reveals 
his  friend  Carew  **  undressing  wuth  the 
260 


The  Tenth   Muse 

eyes"  that  famous,  much  sung,  and  much 
loved  beauty.  In  his  "Rapture"  he  suc- 
ceeded to  admiration  in  showing  that  self- 
conscious  libertine  lust  can  be  the  theme,  if 
not  actually  the  inspiration,  of  fine  poetry, 
and  there — 

The  hated  name 
Of  husband,  wife,  lust,  modest,  chaste,  or  shame 
Are  vain  and  empty  words,  whose  very  sound 
Was  never  heard  in  that  Elysian  ground. 
All  things  are  lawful  there,  that  may  delight 
Nature  or  unrestrained  appetite.  .  .  . 

This  is  among  the  poems  addressed  to 
*'  Celia."  He  has  a  song  **  To  a  lady,  not  yet 
enjoyed  by  her  husband,"  which  begins, 
''Come,  Celia,"  and  it  must  be  concluded 
either  that  his  mistress  married  some  one 
else  or  that  *' Celia"  was  only  a  name  that 
pleased  him.  He  says  himself  that  he  *'  ne'er 
more  of  private  sorrow  knew  than  from  my 
pen  some  froward  mistress  drew."  Like 
Suckling  he  counsels  a  young  maid  to  refuse 
herself  to  her  lovers.  But,  after  all,  perhaps 
the  finest  of  his  poems,  certainly  the  finest  of 
all  except  the  "  Rapture,"  is  the  song  which 
every  one  knows : 

Ask  me  no  more  where  Jove  bestows 
When  June  is  past,  the  fading  rose.  .  . 

This  bears  no  signs  of  personality  or  locality ; 

261 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

it  is  conceited  and  metaphysical,  and  uses 
myths  of  no  consequence  to  him  or  to  us ; 
and  yet  those  first  lines,  perfect  in  their  music 
of  sound  and  suggestion,  take  us  at  once  into 
their  own  world,  and  the  rest  has  no  business 
except  to  keep  us  there,  and  that,  with  so  mas- 
terful an  introduction,  they  can  do  easily  and 
do  with  triumph.  Such  a  poem  shows  how 
little  need  the  lyric  has  of  the  best  that  is 
thought  and  said  in  the  world.  It  is  made  of 
materials  that  are  worth  nothing  and  is  itself 
yet  beyond  price. 

Richard  Crashaw's  Iife(i6i3-i649)  extended 
over  almost  the  same  period  as  Suckling's. 
His  mother  died  in  his  infancy,  and  the  chief 
influences  upon  his  life  must  have  been  men, 
though  with  living  men  must  be  ranked  the 
dead  S.  Teresa,  canonised  in  1622,  whose 
life  helped  him  to  become  a  Catholic.  His 
poems  to  that  saint  are  as  much  love- 
poetry  as  is  **  Epipsychidion,'*  and  more  so 
than  the  *'As  in  a  dusky  and  tempestuous 
night"  or  **  Phoebus,  arise!"  of  William 
Drummond,  though  these  may  have  been 
written  for  the  betrothed  who  died  when  he 
was  thirty.  Crashaw  makes  much  play  with 
words  and  phrases  of  amorous  association, 
and  then  cries  out  with  a  wild  note  for 
the  same  religious  ecstasy  as  the  saint 
knew : 
262 


The  Tenth  Muse 

O  thou  undaunted  daughter  of  desires ! 

By  all  thy  dower  of  Lights  and  Fires  ; 

By  all  the  eagle  in  thee,  all  the  dove ; 

By  all  thy  lives  and  deaths  of  love  ; 

By  thy  large  draughts  of  intellectual  day, 

And  by  thy  thirsts  of  love  more  large  than  they ; 

By  all  thy  brim-filled  Bowls  of  fierce  desire, 

By  thy  last  Morning  s  draught  of  liquid  fire  ; 

By  the  full  kingdom  of  that  final  kiss 

That  seized  thy  parting  Soul,  and  sealed  thee  his  ; 

By  all  the  heavens  that  hast  in  him, 

Fair  sister  of  the  Seraphim  ! 

By  all  of  Him  we  have  in  Thee ; 

Leave  nothing  of  my  Self  in  me. 

Let  me  so  read  thy  life,  that  I 

Unto  all  life  of  mine  may  die. 

He  likes  to  dw^ell  upon  the  virgin  widow- 
hood of  S.  Alexis'  wife.  The  Magdalen 
inspires  him  to  his  extremest  extravagance : 

Well  does  the  May  that  lies 
Smiling  in  thy  cheeks,  confess 
The  April  in  thine  eyes.  .  . 

The  translator  of  love-poems  appears  in  the 
amorous  metaphor  of  his  ''Answer  for  hope," 

Nor  will  the  Virgin  joys  we  wed 

Come  less  unbroken  to  our  bed. 
Because  that  from  the  bridal  cheek  of  bliss 
Thou  steal'st  us  down  a  distant  kiss. 

In  the  ode  *'  prefixed  to  a  little  prayer-book 
given  to  a  young  gentlewoman,"  it  might  be 
excusable  in  the  gentlewoman  or  in  the 
modern  reader  to  miss  the  purpose  of  the 

263 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

devout  poet  in  the  profusion  of  his  physical 
suggestions  of  human  love.  He  wrote  again 
to  her  a  poem  counselling  this  ''heaven- 
designed  soul "  against  the  **  gilded  dunghills, 
glorious  lies "  of  love.  He  comes  as  one 
among  the  suitors  that  besiege  her  ''  maiden 
breast,"  and  he  bids  her,  apparently  fresh  from 
some  cross  in  love,  to  turn  from  thoughts  of 
loving  any  ''son  of  dust,"  to  the  "mighty 
lover  of  souls  "  :  finally,  in  the  last  two  lines, 
the  man  and  the  God  are  openly  placed  upon 
the  same  footing : 

Your  first  choice  fails,  O !  when  you  choose  again 
May  it  not  be  amongst  the  sons  of  men. 

In  an  epigram  he  expressed  his  desire  to 
be  married,  but  "to  a  single  life."  When 
he  wrote  "To  his  (supposed)  mistress"  the 
well-known  "  Whoe'er  she  be,"  it  is  character- 
istic of  him  to  enumerate  the  rich  and  splendid 
things  which  she  can  do  without,  just  as  he 
enhances  the  heavenly  love  by  depreciating 
the  earthly.  The  poem  is  remarkable  for  its 
grave  original  beauty  and  its  being  apparently 
inspired  by  the  thought  of  a  woman  who  may 
some  day  appear  before  him,  and  also  because 
the  woman  is  to  be  not  merely  beautiful  and 
virtuous,  but  intelligent,  one  capable  of 

Sydnaean  showers 

Of  sweet  discourse,  whose  powers 

Can  crown  old  winter's  head  with  flowers. 

264 


The  Tenth  Muse 

It  was  to  a  woman,  Susan  Feilding,  the 
Countess  of  Denbigh,  that  he  dedicated  his 
sacred  "  Carmen  deo  Nostro,"  in  acknowledg- 
ment of  her  goodness  and  charity.  He  also 
thought  her  worthy  of  a  letter  upon  delay 
and  irresolution  in  religion,  urging  her  to 
become  a  Catholic,  as  he  then  was  himself. 

The  life  of  Henry  Vaughan  was  very 
different.  He  married  twice  and  had  six 
children,  and  for  almost  fifty  years  of  his  long 
life  practised  medicine  in  one  district  of 
Wales.  When  he  writes  of  Mary  Magdalen 
he  at  once  brings  a  woman  of  human  stature 
before  the  eyes : 

Dear,  beauteous  Saint !  more  white  than  day, 
When  in  his  naked,  pure  array ; 
Fresher  than  morning-flowers  which  shew 
As  thou  in  tears  dost,  best  in  dew.  .  . 

while  Crashaw  brings  before  the  mind  a 
basketful  of  features  and  qualities  which 
refuse  to  be  integrated.  But  unhappily  we 
know  nothing  of  his  life,  nothing  of  his  cir- 
cumstances while  he  lived  there  among  the 
hills,  and  looking  at  the  rainbow,  thought  of 
it  as  it  was  in  its  first  arching  before  the  eyes 
of  the  patriarchs, 

The  youthful  world's  gray  fathers  in  one  knot. 

He  left  some  love-poems  which  perhaps 
belong  in  part  to  the  years  before  his  retire- 

265 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

ment,  at  the  age  of  about  twenty-three,  to  his 
native  Brecknockshire.  He  did  not  sever  his 
mistress  from  the  rest  of  life,  mystic  as  he 
was : 

0  thou  art  such,  that  I  could  be 
A  lover  to  idolatry  ! 

1  could,  and  should  from  heaven  stray, 
But  that  thy  life  shows  mine  the  way, 
And  leave  awhile  the  Deity 

To  serve  His  image  here  in  thee. 

When  he  thought  of  time  at  last  consuming 
the  grove  of  oaks  which  was  his  retreat, 
he  foresaw  them  "a  fresh  grove  in  th* 
Elysian  land,"  just  as  when  he  and  his 
mistress  walked  there : 

So  there  again,  thou'lt  see  us  move 
In  our  first  innocence  and  love  ; 
And  in  thy  shades,  as  now,  so  then, 
We'll  kiss,  and  smile,  and  walk  again. 

Such  a  place  was  ready  to  become  the  ''  happy 
harmless  solitude"  of  '* faith  and  hope  and 
holiness."  Between  this,  and  his  sacred 
poems  and  pious  thoughts  and  ejaculations, 
there  seems  no  unbridged  gulf,  although  he 
came  later  to  contemn  '*  every  big  imperious 
lust  which  fools  admire  in  sinful  dust."  But 
what  the  change  was  that  put  the  waterfall's 
murmurs  and  the  flowers  into  eternity,  and 
made  the  rain  visibly  come  from  God's  hand, 
we  do  not  know,  nor  how  human  love  went 
266 


The  Tenth  Muse 

side  by  side  with  it,  nor  what  part  those 
two  women  played,  while  visits  daily  passed 
between  God  and  ''  such  poor  grass  "  : 

With  what  sweet  looks  doth  Thy  love  shine 

On  those  low  violets  of  Thine, 

While  the  tall  tulip  is  accurst, 

And  Crowns  Imperial  die  with  thirst ! 

Nothing  can  be  said  of  the  influence  of 
women  upon  this  man,  certainly  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  feminine  type  of  geniuses. 

Andrew  Marvell  is  another  poet,  and  a 
manly  poet,  of  whom  it  may  confidently  be 
said  that  women  had  a  fair,  and  not  merely 
decorative,  share  in  his  world.  One  of  his 
finest  poems,  '*  The  Nymph  complaining  for 
the  death  of  her  fawn,"  is  that  uncommon 
thing,  a  poem  written  from  a  woman's  point 
of  view,  and  with  evident  sympathy  and 
tenderness.     Passages  like — 

Ungentle  men  !  they  cannot  thrive 
Who  killed  thee.     Thou  ne'er  didst  alive 
Them  any  harm,  alas !   nor  could 
Thy  death  yet  do  them  any  good  .  .  . 


and 


It  is  a  wondrous  thing  how  fleet 
'Twas  on  those  little  silver  feet  . 


foretell  the  day  when  poetry  was  to  become 
more  conspicuously  and  regularly  feminine. 

267 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

The  poem  on  ''The  picture  of  little  T.C.  in 
a  prospect  of  flowers,"  belongs  to  the  same 
class,  or  suggests  the  manliness  that  would 
not  be  complete  without  its  womanliness 
also. 

But  that  day  was  not  yet.  When  Marvell 
died  at  the  age  of  fifty-seven,  in  1678,  poetry 
had  entered  an  age  when  it  was  to  reflect  less 
of  the  influence  of  women  than  at  any  other. 
It  was  the  age  of  clubs  and  coffee-houses, 
of  a  purely  masculine  tone  in  society  and 
in  literature.  Even  Thomson's  ''  Castle  of 
Indolence  "  contains  no  woman,  if  we  except 
the  personification  of  the  '*  lady  proud," 
Hypochondria,  and  practically  no  reference 
to  a  woman  except  in  a  simile.  Poetry  was 
social  ;  men  wrote  only  what  they  would  say 
and  think  in  the  company  of  other  men — only 
not  alas  I  in  the  same  language.  And  what 
is  more,  the  women  were  upon  the  same  level, 
and  Prior,  said  Johnson,  was  *'a  lady's 
book "  ;  society  and  taste  were  the  creation 
of  men  alone.  This  poetry  does  not  lack 
references  to  women  and  to  love,  but  the  in- 
exorable convention  was  that  love  was  a  game, 
a  game  in  which  hearts  were  broken.  Too 
few  of  the  really  private  letters  and  conversa- 
tions of  the  age  have  been  preserved,  but  had 
they  been  we  should  perhaps  have  been 
entertained  again  and  again  by  the  same 
268 


The  Tenth  Muse 

difference  ^between  public  and  private  utter- 
ance as  between  Otway's : 

Two  things  in  sweet  Retirement  much  desir'd, 
A  generous  Bottle  and  a  lovesome  She.  .  . 

and  the  same  poet's  letters  to  Mrs.  Barry 
(signed  '*  Weeping  Otway,"  &c.)  in  this  strain  : 

I  love,  I  doat,  I  am  mad,  and  know  no  measure, 
nothing  but  Extremes  give  me  Ease ;  the  kindest 
Love,  or  most  provoking  scorn  .  .  . 

and 

Generally  with  Wine  or  Conversation  I  diverted 
or  appeased  the  Demon  that  possessed  me  ;  but 
when  at  Night,  returning  to  my  unhappy  self,  to 
give  my  Heart  an  Account  why  I  had  done  it  so 
unnatural  a  Violence,  it  was  then  I  always  paid  a 
treble  interest  for  the  short  Moments  of  Ease,  which 
I  had  borrowed  ;  then  every  treacherous  Thought 
rose  up,  and  took  your  part,  nor  left  me  till  they 
had  thrown  me  on  my  Bed,  and  opened  those 
sluices  of  Tears,  that  were  to  run  till  morning.  .  . 

This  unconvincing  style  was  the  penalty 
which  Otway  had  to  pay  for  the  sins  of  his 
age.  He  was  not  without  those  sins,  but 
there  seems  no  reason  to  question  the  ex- 
tremity of  his  passion  for  Mrs.  Barry,  an 
actress  who  played  leading  parts  in  almost 
all  of  Otway's  plays,  and  became  the  Earl  of 
Rochester's  mistress.  It  must  have  needed 
courage  as  well  as  love  to  preserve  a  passion 

269 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

for  the  scornful  mistress  of  Rochester,  and 
despair  is  said  to  have  been  Otway's  reason 
for  enlisting  in  the  army  in  1678  when  he 
was  twenty-six.  In  a  society  so  debauched 
even  had  a  man  been  able  to  write  love- 
poems,  he  might  well  have  blushed  to  have  it 
known. 

Johnson  may  have  been  unjust  to  Waller 
when  he  described  him  as  submitting  to 
the  disdain  of  Lady  Dorothea  Sidney,  his 
**  Sacharissa,"  and  looking  about  for  an  easier 
conquest ;  but  his  criticism  is  just  to  the 
majority  of  poets  in  the  age  inaugurated  by 
Waller.  It  has  not  been  discovered,  says 
Johnson,  that  his  second  wife  was  won  by 
poetry,  **nor  is  anything  told  of  her,  but 
that  she  brought  him  many  children.  He 
doubtless  praised  some  whom  he  would  have 
been  afraid  to  marry ;  and  perhaps  married 
one  whom  he  would  have  been  ashamed  to 
praise.  Many  qualities  contribute  to  domestic 
happiness,  upon  which  poetry  has  no  colours 
to  bestow ;  and  many  airs  and  sallies 
may  delight  imagination,  which  he  who 
flatters  them  never  can  approve.  There  are 
charms  made  only  for  distant  admiration." 
Sacharissa  was  about  twelve  years  younger 
than  Waller,  and  he  met  her  before  she  was 
twenty.  None  of  his  poems  to  her  retains 
any  trace  of  passion,  if  it  ever  had  any. 
270 


The  Tenth   Muse 

Waller  was  a  man  who  could  write  pretty 
well  on  anybody  or  anything,  and  he  wrote 
no  better  on  Sacharissa  than  on  Lady 
Carlisle  or  the  Queen.  He  wanted  to  marry 
Lady  Dorothy  but  was  put  off,  and  having 
no  strong  inclinations  of  any  kind,  or  any 
characteristic  subject-matter,  he  wrote  about 
her.  When  he  wrote  his  best,  as  we  should 
have  expected,  and  as  Mr.  Thorn  Drury  points 
out,  there  is  no  evidence  that  Sacharissa  was 
his  theme.  *'Go,  lovely  rose"  and  ''On  a 
Girdle"  are  tributes  not  to  her  but  to  the 
spirit  of  love  and  to  a  combination  of 
circumstances  which  we  have  still  to  call 
by  the  name  of  accident,  well  knowing  that 
it  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  This,  of  course,  by 
no  means  implies  that  Waller  did  not  know 
love.  Something  may  be  true  of  him  like 
what  was  said  of  Cowley,  another  poet  whose 
love  does  not — as  his  friendship  does — ring 
true,  that  he  was  "  much  in  love  with  his 
Leonora,"  who  married  some  one  else,  "  and 
Cowley  never  was  in  love  with  anybody 
after." 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  age  that  its 
poets  wrote  love-poetry  which  could  not 
be  supposed  to  have  any  cause  or  aim  but 
a  casual  kiss,  and  that  its  critic  should 
be  content  to  separate  poetry  from  qualities 
contributing  to  domestic  happiness.     Where 

271 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

true  feeling  was  so  much  forbidden  to  poetry, 
a  spurred  extravagance  of  style  in  praise  of 
slight  or  simulated  feeling  was  bound  to 
appear,  so  as  to  incur  the  critic's  censure, 
that  ''the  Empire  of  Beauty  is  represented 
as  exerting  its  influence  further  than  can  be 
allowed  by  the  multiplicity  of  human  passions, 
and  the  variety  of  human  wants.  Such  books, 
therefore,  may  be  considered  as  showing  the 
world  under  a  false  appearance,  and,  so  far 
as  they  obtain  credit  from  the  young  and 
inexperienced,  as  misleading  expectation  and 
misguiding  practice." 

Gray  wrote  hardly  any  love-poetry,  and 
what  he  wrote  is  his  worst,  if  we  except  his 
sonnet  on  the  death  of  Richard  West,  and 
that,  inspired  by  a  man,  is  among  his  finest. 
This  artificial  and  unemotional  poetry  is 
as  foreign  to  us  as  Chinese,  but  it  has  also 
in  its  perfection,  the  charm  as  well  as  the 
disadvantage  of  foreignness.  Time  has  made 
some  of  it  a  parody  of  itself,  and  Prior's  '*  To 
Chloe  Weeping  " — 

See,  whilst  thou  weepst,  fair  Chloe,  see 
The  world  in  sympathy  with  thee 

deceives  nobody  and  can  or  must  be  read  as 
laughing  with   us   at   itself.     As    Prior  said 
himself: 
272 


'^^^^^^^^^^^^^■Hi 

^^^^m\^^^*^" 

^Hab 

^^^^^H^  Av^^* 

^d 

^^^H^n|^k^x^^^^^^^B 

^^:|l 

lite 

'■\ 

■■""v'              (fi^^^^^H 

^^K^"'" 

The  Tenth  Muse 

To  be  vext  by  a  trifle  or  two  that  I  writ, 

Your  judgment  at  once  and  my  passion  you  wrong  ; 

You  take  that  for  fact  which  will  scarce  be  found 

wit : 
Od's  life !  must  one  swear  to  the  truth  of  a  song  ? 

If  taken  seriously  this  poetry  is  the  better 
the  more  licentious,  and  even  the  more 
obscene  it  is,  because  the  license  and  obscenity 
are  genuine  and  are  also  qualities  not  confined 
to  one  age  or  place.  Men  of  that  age  wrote 
as  many  of  our  age  speak  in  the  absence  of 
women,  and  for  lack  of  passion  or  interest  in 
life.  Playfulness  at  least  they  preserved,  and 
such  a  poem  as  ''A  Lover's  Anger"  by  Prior 
combines  playfulness  and  truth  to  nature : 

As  Chloe  came  into  the  room  t'  other  day, 
I  peevish  began  ;  Where  so  long  could  you  stay  ? 
In  your  lifetime  you  never  regarded  your  hour  : 
You  promised  at  two  ;    and  (pray  look,  child)  'tis 

four. 
A  lady's  watch  needs  neither  figures  nor  wheels  : 
'Tis  enough,  that  'tis  loaded  with  baubles  and  seals. 
A  temper  so  heedless  no  mortal  can  bear — 
Thus  far  I  went  on  with  a  resolute  air. 
Lord  bless  me  !  said  she  ;  let  a  body  but  speak : 
Here's  an  ugly  hard  rosebud  fallen  into  my  neck  : 
It  has  hurt  me,  and  vexed  me  to  such  a  degree — 
See  here  ;  for  you  never  believe  me  ;  pray  see, 
On  the  left  side  my  breast  what  a  mark  it  has  made. 
So  saying,  her  bosom  she  careless  displayed. 
That  seat  of  delight  I  with  wonder  surveyed  ; 
And  forgot  every  word  I  designed  to  have  said. 

s  273 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Such  was  the  characteristic  '*Fair"  of  the 

age.     She  was  not  adequate,  though  she  was 

much  praised  on  account  of  her  resemblance 

to  Venus,  etc.     Swift  came  to  the  conclusion 

that  love  in  his  day  was  not  '*  what  those 

ancient  poets    sing,"    and  seems  to  confess 

that  he  **had  sighed  and  languished,  vowed 

and  writ  for  pastime  or  to  show  his  wit." 

When,  therefore,  he  describes  the  making  of 

Vanessa  who  loved  him  and  perhaps  won  his 

love — 

But  what  success  Vanessa  met 
Is  to  the  world  a  secret  yet — 

he  gives  her  not  only  beauty,  but  what  was 

For  manly  bosoms  chiefly  fit, 

The  seeds  of  knowledge,  judgment,  wit.  .  . 

She  was  neither  coquette  nor  prude.  Her 
only  weakness — or  was  it  Swift's  in  believing 
such  a  thing? — was  that  she  admired  Swift's 
verses.  When  she  made  love,  ''  as  serious  as 
a  tragic  player,"  Swift  could  scarcely  believe 
but  she  was  rallying  him.  Only  in  his 
**  Journal  to  Stella,"  and  the  poems  relating 
to  Vanessa  (Hester  Vanhomrigh)  and  Stella 
(Esther  Johnson)  does  Swift  show  the  favour- 
able influence  of  women.  Elsewhere  the 
thought  of  women  only  impels  him  to  exceed 
in  the  cold,  the  callous,  and  the  gross  in 
that  combination  which  is  Swift's  alone. 
274 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Swift  was  not  a  poet,  nor  was  he  a  very- 
skilful  or  brilliant  versifier.  Nevertheless 
the  best  of  his  verses  are  those  pieces  relating 
to  the  two  women,  who  could  not  change  his 
outlook,  but  compelled  him  to  adopt  another 
one  while  he  was  with  them.  For  many- 
years  he  made  it  his  duty  to  write  a  poem  for 
Stella's  birthday,  March  13,  and  this  occasion 
puts  him  into  a  mood  which  is  lovable  or  all 
but  lovable.  Although  he  says  :  *'  with  friend- 
ship and  esteem  possest,  I  ne'er  admitted 
Love  a  guest,"  he  pays  her  ingenious  and 
exuberant  compliments,  perhaps  the  greatest 
being  his  assertion  that  Prometheus  stole  for 
her  "  the  fire  that  forms  a  manly  soul." 
When  she  was  past  forty  and  he  was  past 
fifty  he  sent  her  ''  a  receipt  to  restore  Stella's 
youth  "  :  she  must  be  sent  down  to  Quilca  for 
a  country  life  ;  then  she 

For  a  blooming  nymph  will  pass, 

Just  fifteen,  coming  summer's  grass, 

Your  jetty  locks  with  garlands  crown'd, 

While  all  the  squires  for  nine  miles  round, 

Attended  by  a  brace  of  curs, 

With  jockey  boots  and  silver  spurs. 

No  less  than  justices  o'  quorum, 

Their  cow-boys  bearing  cloaks  before  'em. 

Shall  leave  deciding  broken  pates, 

To  kiss  your  steps  at  Quilca  gates. 

Under  the  circumstances,  this  is  perhaps 
the  most  charming  love-poem  of  the  first  half 

275 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

of  that  century.  Her  beauty,  he  knew,  was 
changing,  but  with  the  change  his  eyes  were 
growing  dim  ;  he  thanked  Nature,  **  always  in 
the  right,"  for  this  adaptation.  He  concluded 
with  a  wish  that  Fortune  should  never  make 
him  deaf  and  mend  his  sight.  That  was 
upon  Stella's  birthday  in  1725.  In  1740  he 
added  the  note :  ''  Now  deaf"  to  his  copy  of 
the  **  Miscellanies."  It  is  not  always  that  we 
are  thankful  to  Swift  for  his  truth  to  Nature, 
such  as  it  is  ;  but  some  of  the  poems  to  Stella 
contain  plain  facts  about  her  which  we  would 
not  willingly  have  lost,  and  are  worth  the 
whole  of  '*  Baucis  and  Philemon."  Such  are 
those  in  his  picture  of  her  coming  to  him  in 
a  sickness  in  1720.     He  tells  how  Stella 

My  sinking  spirit  now  supplies 
With  cordials  in  her  hands  and  eyes  : 
Now  with  a  soft  and  silent  tread 
Unheard  she  moves  about  my  bed. 
I  see  her  taste  each  nauseous  draught, 
And  so  obligingly  am  caught  : 
I  bless  the  hand  from  whence  they  came, 
Nor  dare  distort  my  face  for  shame.  .  .  . 

Most  courtly  is  the  fond  ingenuity  of  the 
birthday  poem  in  1723,  where,  ''resolved  his 
annual  verse  to  pay,"  he  bites  his  nails  and 
scratches  his  head  in  vain,  until,  at  last, 
appealing  to  Apollo,  the  God  directs  him  to 
the  hiding-place  of  a  great  bottle  of  wine, 
telling  him  that  upon  a  deep  draught  from  it 
276 


I 


The  Tenth  Muse 

The  Muse  will  at  your  call  appear, 
With  Stella's  praise  to  crown  the  year. 

In  return,  Stella  thanked  him  for  teaching 
her  the  wisdom  so  few  women  have,  '*  to 
please  at  thirty-six,"  and  blessed  him  : 

O  !  turn  your  precepts  into  laws, 
Redeem  the  women's  ruin'd  cause. 
Retrieve  lost  empire  to  our  sex. 
That  men  may  bow  their  rebel  necks. 

The  evidence  of  the  poets  is  insufficient — 
except  to  condemn  themselves — but  it  might 
appear  from  it  that  their  acquaintance  among 
women  included  mainly  prostitutes  and  girls 
whocould  not  attract  an  intelligent  man  unless 
he  was  in  liquor.  One  of  the  exceptions  is 
Prior's  '*  Jinny  the  Just,"  a  poem  found  among 
the  Longleat  MSS.  and  lately  reprinted  by  the 
Cambridge  University  Press.  It  reminds  us 
that  Prior,  after  spending  the  evening  with  men 
like  Oxford,  Bolingbroke,  Pope,  and  Swift, 
would  go  and  smoke  a  pipe  and  drink  a  bottle 
of  ale  with  a  common  soldier  and  his  wife  in 
Long  Acre  before  going  to  bed.  This  was 
Bessy  Cox,  for  whom  he  left  money  to  purchase 
an  annuity ;  and  it  was  said  that  he  would  have 
married  her  had  her  husband  not  survived  him 
by  a  little  while.  She  marriedacobbler  instead. 
''  Jinny  the  just  *'  was  a  plain  housewife  with 
beauty  *'  rather  for  use  than  parade,"  and — 

277 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Her  blood  so  well  mixt  and  flesh  so  well  pasted 
That   though  her    youth    faded    her    comeliness 

lasted  ; 
The  blew  was  wore  off  but  the  plum  was  well 

tasted. 

She  *'  knew  better  to  live  than  dispute."  She 
worked  hard  so  that  ''  she  scarce  could  have 
time  for  the  Psalms  of  the  day,"  and  was 
never  finished  : 

Retire  from  this  Sepulchre  all  the  profane, 

You  that  love  for  debauch  or  that  marry  for  gain, 

Retire  lest  ye  trouble  the  Manes  of  Jane. 

But  thou  that  know'st  love  above  interest  or  lust, 

Strew  the  myrtle  and  rose  on  this  once  belov'd  dust, 

And  shed  one  pious  tear  upon  Jinny  the  just. 

The  soldier's  wife,  or  whatever  she  was, 
moved  him  to  what  is  possibly  his  best 
poem,  one  of  the  few  in  which  he  speaks  a 
language  unmistakable  and  pleasing  to  all. 
Yet  the  same  woman  was  possibly  the  Chloe 
of  his  other  poems ;  for  Johnson  seems  to 
think  Chloe  was  '*  one  of  his  wenches  "  but 
also  *' sometimes  ideal,"  while  "the  woman 
with  whom  he  cohabited  was  a  despicable 
drab  of  the  lowest  species."  In  this  want  of 
harmony  between  poetry  and  life  lay  his  age's 
principal  weakness,  in  the  need  it  felt  either 
of  dressing  up  and  decorating  the  facts  for  a 
public  appearance,  in  too  fine  a  sense  of  the 
dignity  of  literature  and  too  gross  a  sense  of 
278 


The  Tenth  Muse 

the  dignity  of  life  ;  or  on  the  other  hand  the 
need  of  disguising  the  truth  in  a  jaunty 
rakish  manner.  Another  exceptional  poem 
must  also  be  credited  to  Prior,  his  *'  Henry 
and  Emma "  written  upon  the  model  of  the 
old  ''  Nut-brown  Maid."  Nor  must  Johnson's 
opinion  of  this  be  forgotten  :  *'  A  dull  and 
tedious  dialogue,  which  excites  neither  esteem 
for  the  man  nor  tenderness  for  the  woman. 
The  example  of  Emma,  who  resolves  to 
follow  an  outlawed  murderer  wherever  fear 
and  guilt  shall  drive  him,  deserves  no  imita- 
tion ;  and  the  experiment  by  which  Henry 
tries  the  lady's  constancy  is  such  as  must 
end  either  in  infamy  to  her  or  in  disappoint- 
ment to  himself."  Finally,  it  must  be  put 
on  record  of  Prior  that,  in  the  words  of 
the  lady  whom  he  called  in  her  childhood 
**  My  noble  lovely  little  Peggy,"  he  was 
remembered  as  a  man  ''  beloved  by  every 
living  thing  in  the  house — master,  child  and 
servant,  human  creature  or  animal."  So 
much  was  he  above  his  poetry. 

Thomson  also  was  weakened  by  his  age  in 
the  same  way  though  not  to  a  similar  extent, 
saved  as  he  was  by  his  country  Scotch  origin 
and  outdoor  habits.  He  also,  like  Waller, 
lost  his  father  at  an  early  age  and  was  much 
under  the  influence  of  a  tenderly  loved 
mother ;  and   his   relations  with  his  sisters 

279 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

show  him  in  a  most  amiable  light,  helping 
them  to  set  up  a  milliner  s  shop  in  Edinburgh. 
When  about  thirty-six  he  fell  in  love  with  a 
Miss  Elizabeth  Young  whom  he  addressed 
and  referred  to  in  '*  The  Seasons "  as 
*'  Amanda."  She  appears  to  have  returned 
his  love  but  to  have  married  an  Admiral 
some  years  later  under  pressure  from  an 
ambitious  mother.  He  told  her  that  she 
mixed  with  all  his  thoughts,  *'  even  the  most 
studious,"  and  did  not  disturb  them  but  gave 
them  '*  greater  harmony  and  spirit."  When, 
later  on,  another  woman  was  suggested  to 
him  by  his  friends,  he  argued  unanswerably 
that  he  saw  and  admired  all  her  good  qualities 
and  good  looks  ;  but — ''  every  man  has  a 
singular  and  uncontrollable  imagination  of 
his  own  "  and  '*  she  does  not  pique  mine  "  ; 
and  *'  though  a  woman  had  the  form  and 
spoke  with  the  tongue  of  angels,  though  all 
divine  gifts  and  graces  were  hers,  yet  without 
striking  the  fancy  she  does  nothing."  He 
was,  he  said,  too  old  to  marry  without  feeling 
*'a  great  flame  of  imagination."  Neither 
could  he  write  of  love,  and  his  love-poems 
are  interesting  only  because  we  know  that  he 
was  a  true  lover.  He  never  married.  It 
was  an  age  of  unmarried  poets ;  Otway, 
Pope,  Swift,  Gay,  Gray,  and  Prior  were 
all  unmarried. 
280 


The  Tenth  Muse 

In  the  poems  where  Chatterton  used  the 
language  of  his  age,  he  was  the  child  of  his 
age  and  in  nothing  more  so  than  in  his  treat- 
ment of  women.  He  was  a  posthumous  and 
only  surviving  son,  brought  up  in  a  poor 
small  house  by  his  mother  and  one  sister. 
His  mother  taught  him  to  read  out  of  a 
black-letter  Bible,  thus  unconsciously  pre- 
paring him  for  his  impersonation  of  the 
mediaeval  poet,  Rowley,  as  his  biographer, 
Mr.  John  H.  Ingram,  remarks.  Both  women 
did  the  little  they  could  for  him,  and  were 
devoted  to  him  and  afterwards  to  his  memory. 
In  return  he  was  affectionate  and  generous  ; 
as  a  child  he  promised  them  finery  if  ever  he 
could  procure  it ;  and  he  spent  some  of  his 
last  earnings  upon  them.  But  they  were  not 
enough  for  the  rapidly  developing  boy,  and  he 
had  a  numerous  acquaintance  of  mature  men, 
a  clergyman,  a  surgeon,  a  pewterer  and  others. 
It  is  hinted  that  the  surgeon,  Barrett,  helped 
to  corrupt  the  boy  with  his  medical  books, 
but  a  boy  as  precocious  and  independent  as 
Chatterton,  who  had  been  at  a  big  boarding- 
school  and  afterwards  did  pretty  much  as  he 
liked,  could  learn  a  great  deal  without  such 
help.  He  is  said  to  have  told  his  sister  that 
severe  study  tended  to  sour  the  temper,  and 
that  ''he  had  seen  all  the  sex  with  equal 
indifference  but  those  that  Nature  had  made 

281 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

dear";    and    he    thought    of    ** making    an 
acquaintance  with  a  girl  in  the  neighbour- 
hood, supposing   it   might   soften   the    aus- 
terity   of    temper    study    had    occasioned." 
The  sister  said  that  *'he  would  frequently 
walk  the  College  Green  with  the  young  girls 
that   statedly   paraded   there   to   show  their 
finery,"   but   added   that   she    believed    ''he 
was  no  debauchee."     This  probably  means 
that  he  did  not  disdain  familiarity  with  the 
flashy   daughters    of   small    tradesmen   and 
the   like  on    holidays,    some   of    them    less 
virtuous   than  others.     He  himself  boasted 
when  he  was  fifteen  that  he  had  been  twenty- 
three  times  violently  in  love  during  a  short 
period,    '*  and    not    a    few    times    came    off 
victorious  "  ;  if  there  be  safety  in  numbers, 
this  was  innocent   enough.     An   old   friend 
gave  him  this  testimonial :    ''  Temperate  in 
his  living,  moderate  in  his  pleasures,  regular 
in  his  exercises,  he  was  undeserving  of  the 
aspersion  " — that  he  lived  a  dissipated  life. 
In    London   they   said   he  was  a  sad   rake. 
His    **  Sunday  :    A    Fragment "   shows   him 
admiring  ''each  latent  charm"  of  the  ladies 
in  church,  and  he  wrote  like  a  very  Suckling 
upon  marriage  and  female  virtue.     But  his 
precocity  and  libertinism  in  words  may  have 
been  bravado  that  implied  only  the  novelty 
and  fascination  of  the  subject.     On  the  other 
282 


The  Tenth  Muse 

hand  he  may  have  told  the  exact  truth  in  a 
worthless  ''  Song"  when  he  wrote  : 

This  passion  celestial  by  heaven  was  designed 
The  only  fixed  means  of  improving  the  mind ; 
When  it  beams  on  the  senses,  they  quickly  display 
How  great  and  prolific,  how  pleasing  the  ray. 

Whatever  his  habits  few  of  his  poems  to 
women  bear  any  clear  trace  of  passion.  Some 
he  wrote  on  behalf  of  his  friend,  Baker,  to 
be  sent  as  his  own  to  his  sweetheart,  Miss 
Eleanor  Hoyland,  and  it  is  hardly  to  be 
supposed  that  he  would  have  written  on  his 
own  behalf  in  the  same  tones  : 

Thou  greatest  beauty  of  the  sex. 
When  will  the  little  god  perplex 

The  mansions  of  thy  breast  ? 
When  wilt  thou  own  a  flame  as  pure 
As  that  seraphic  souls  endure, 

And  make  thy  Baker  blest  ? 

*'  Love,  lawless  tyrant  of  my  breast "  is  not  in 
the  key  of  love,  and  he  may  have  been  heart- 
whole  as  well  as  innocent  towards  the  many 
girls  whom  he  mentions  in  his  London  letters 
to  the  mother,  though  this  mention  does  not 
prove  them  beyond  reproach,  since  his  play- 
fulness in  these  letters  has  pretty  wide  limits, 
and  he  may  have  counted  upon  his  mother's 
unsuspiciousness.  An  *'  Elegy,"  written  only 
a  month  or  two  before  his  death,  is  addressed 

283 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

to  a  woman  unknown  in  a  manner  which 
suggests  that  love  may  have  had  something 
to  do  with  his  end  : 

Let  mercy  plead  my  cause  ;  and  think,  Oh  !  think! 

A  love  like  mine  but  ill  deserves  thy  hate : 
Remember,  I  am  tottering  on  the  brink. 

Thy  smile  or  censure  seals  my  final  fate. 

But  these  words  may  be  worth  less  than  their 
surface  value,  and  I  cannot  believe  that  Chat- 
terton  deeply  moved  would  have  written  thus 
if  he  had  written  at  all. 

Where  there  is  no  appearance  or  profession 
of  personalities  he  writes  of  women  and  love  in 
a  far  different  tone,  in  a  tone  indicated  by  the 
words  of  the  Second  Minstrel  in  *'  Aella  "  : 

Angels  be  wrought  to  be  of  neither  kind, 

Angels  alone  from  hot  desire  be  free. 
There  is  a  somewhat  ever  in  the  mind. 

That,  without  woman,  cannot  stilled  be  .  .  . 
Albeit,  without  women,  men  were  peers  . 

To  savage  kind,  and  would  but  live  to  slay.  ...  3 

He  wrote  nothing  more  beautiful  than  the 
third  and  fourth  lines.  The  passion  of  Bertha 
gave  his  verse  a  freedom  and  excitement  of 
movement  which  it  did  not  often  possess. 
The  speech  of  the  woman  in  his  third  Eclogue, 
the  woman  doomed  to  work  thinking  of  the 
jewelled  dame  buried  in  the  church,  comes 
near  to  a  romantic  earthiness  and  implies  a 
deep  sympathy  : 
284 


The  Tenth  Muse 

How  hard  is  my  doom  to  wurch ! 

Much  is  my  woe: 
Dame  Agnes,  who  lies  in  the  church 

With  birlette  gold, 
With  gilded  aumeres,  strong,  untold, 

What  was  she  more  than  me,  to  be  so  ? 

In  '*The  Storie  of  William  Canynge*'  he 
makes  a  beautiful  picture  of  a  mortal  woman, 
under  the  pretext  of  describing  Truth  : 

Like  to  the  silver  moon  in  frosty  neet, 
The  damoisel  did  come,  so  blithe  and  sweet. 

Here,  with  the  old  words,  he  has  got  back 
into  an  older  tradition  of  English  poetry. 
The  tradition  and  his  own  passionate  nature 
together  brought  forth  a  beauty  beyond  the 
reach  of  Chatterton  or  his  age  alone.  When 
he  wrote  in  the  manner  of  his  ow^n  age,  even 
when  apparently  expressing  a  personal  emo- 
tion, he  wrote  no  better  than  his  age ;  in  fact, 
so  ill  that  it  is  small  wonder  many  refused  to 
believe  Rowley  and  Chatterton  one  man  who 
were  obviously  two  spirits. 

It  is  one  of  the  chief  glories  of  Burns  that 
he  wrote  love-poems  which  every  age,  and  not 
only  his  own,  must  recognise  as  equally  true 
at  once  to  the  spirit  of  life  and  to  the  spirit 
of  poetry.  With  his  songs  upon  our  lips 
Chloe  seems  a  paper  girl,  and  even  Stella 
but  a  woman  looking  out  of  a  picture,  an  old 

285 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

picture,  on  a  wall.  Except  Shakespeare's 
and  Donne's  there  is  hardly  a  woman  of  the 
lyric  poets  to  be  compared  with  Burns',  who 
will  stand  the  sunlight  and  the  breath  of 
life  like  his.  And  yet  even  Burns  had 
his  *'  Chloris "  and  we  must  remember  the 
incident  of  *'Clarinda"  and  *' Sylvander." 
These  were  the  names  borne,  and  self-im- 
posed, by  Mrs.  M'Lehose  and  Burns  in  their 
sentimental  friendship  during  the  Edinburgh 
visit  of  1787.  *'  I  like  the  idea  of  Arcadian 
names  "  wrote  Burns,  *'  in  a  commerce  of  this 
kind,"  that  is,  a  friendship  which  he  was 
always  hoping  to  develop  into  a  satisfied 
passion.     This  was  the  tune — 

Clarinda,  mistress  of  my  soul, 

The  measur'd  time  is  run ! 
The  wretch  beneath  the  dreary  pole 

So  marks  his  latest  sun. 

To  what  dark  cave  of  frozen  night 

Shall  poor  Sylvander  hie, 
Deprived  of  thee,  his  life  and  light, 

The  sun  of  all  his  joy.  .  .  . 

We  know  that  it  was  written  while  his 
*'  bosom  "  was  *' interested  "  in  Mrs.  M'Lehose, 
so  much  interested  that  he  had  to  explain  to 
her  that  some  mixture  of  the  ''delicious 
passion  "  was  necessary.  But  she  was  some- 
what above  him  in  social  position,  and  he 
appears  to  have  tried  to  write  up  to  her. 
286 


The  Tenth  Muse 

As  a  rule  Burns  ''condescended  upon  his 
women,"  which  is  Henley's  amplification  of 
Gilbert  Burns*  remark  that  his  brothers 
love  ''  rarely  settled  upon  those  who  were 
richer  than  himself,  or  who  had  more  con- 
sequence in  life."  When  he  was  eighteen 
he  was  ''  constantly  the  victim  of  some 
fair  enslaver,"  and  he  was  rhyming  but 
did  little  good.  Until  his  twenty-third  year 
these  loves  were  ''  governed  by  the  strictest 
rules  of  morality."  He  wrote  to  Ellison 
Begbie  with  a  little  contempt  for  '*  flames  and 
raptures,"  but  sure  that  *'the  nobler  faculties 
of  the  mind  with  kindred  feelings  of  the  heart 
can  only  be  the  foundation  of  friendship,  and 
it  has  always  been  my  opinion  that  the  married 
life  was  only  friendship  in  a  more  exalted 
degree."  At  the  thought  of  her — he  told  her 
— "  every  feeling  of  humanity,  every  prin- 
ciple of  generosity  "  kindled  in  his  breast.  A 
little  later  he  told  a  friend  that  his  favourite 
authors  were  '*of  the  sentimental  kind "  ; 
Shenstone,  Thomson,  **  Man  of  Feeling " 
\  Mackenzie,  '*  Ossian "  Macpherson,  Sterne 
and  others,  were  ''  the  glorious  models  "  after 
which  he  endeavoured  to  form  his  conduct. 
Later  still,  in  1785,  he  was  telling  a  young 
lady  of  seventeen  that ''  poets,  of  all  mankind, 
feel  most  forcibly  the  powers  of  beauty " ; 
''  the  sight  of  a  fine  flower,  or  the  company  of 

287 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

a  fine  woman  (by  far  the  finest  part  of  God's 
works  below),  has  sensations  for  the  poetic 
heart  that  the  herd  of  men  are  strangers  to." 
He  shared  the  reading  of  Collins  with  another 
whose  piano  and  herself  **  have  played  the 
deuce  somehow  about  my  heart."  But  already 
in  1784  he  was  the  father  of  a  child  by  Eliza- 
beth Paton,  and  the  author  of  '*  A  Poet's  wel- 
come to  his  love-begotten  daughter ;  the  first 
instance  that  entitled  him  to  the  venerable 
appelation  of  father."  The  child  lived  with 
him  and  afterwards  with  his  mother,  and  did 
not  spoil  the  promise  of  the  spirited  welcome — 

Sweet  fruit  o'  monie  a  merry  dint, 

My  funny  toil  is  no  a'  tint : 

Tho'  thou  cam  to  the  warl'  asklent, 

Which  fools  may  scoff  at. 
In  my  last  plack  thy  part's  be  in  't 

The  better  half  o't. 

Mr.  W.  E.  Henley  and  Mr.  Henderson  con-  1 
jecture  that  *'  The  rantin  dog,  the  daddie  o't !  "  ' 
was  sent  to  her  while  she  was  "  under  a  cloud  " 
— either  to  her,  or  to  Jean.  He  met  Jean 
Armour  in  the  same  year,  and  by  1786  she 
also  was  with  child.  Burns  did  not  wish  to 
marry,  but  offered  to  do  so,  and  was  conse- 
quently shamed  by  the  opposition  of  her 
father,  a  mason,  who  sent  her  out  of  his 
way ;  not  only  shamed,  but  in  his  own  words 
*'  nine  parts  and  nine-tenths,  out  of  ten,  stark 
288 


The  Tenth  Muse 

staring  mad."  He  ran  into  ** dissipation  and 
riot "  to  forget  her  and  perhaps  found  Mary 
Campbell,  his  ''  Highland  Mary,"  during  the 
process.  At  Edinburgh  in  1787  Clarinda 
was  his  '*  ever  dearest "  and  ''  matchless  fair,'* 
and  he  told  her  of  Jean  Armour  in  a  manner 
becoming  to  Sylvander  writing  to  Clarinda, 
but  not  becoming  to  Burns.  The  next  year 
he  married  Jean  who  had  had  her  fourth 
child.  He  wrote  ''  Of  a  the  airts  the  wind 
can  blaw  "  out  of  compliment  to  her,  during 
the  honeymoon  ;  and  he  reflected  not  long 
afterwards  that  if  he  had  not  got  a  partner 
'*who  could  have  entered  into  my  favourite 
studies,"  etc.,  he  had  also  missed  the  ex- 
penses, caprices  and  affectations  which 
"  almost  universally  pervade  the  misses  of  the 
would-be  gentry,"  and  further,  that  **  A  wife's 
head  is  immaterial  compared  with  her  heart." 
He  never  had  to  complain  of  her  heart,  and 
when  in  1791  she  and  Anne  Park  each  bore 
him  a  child,  Jean  suckled  both.  It  was 
not  solely  for  the  benefit  of  the  bishop  whom 
he  addressed  that  he  spoke  as  follows  of  his 
marriage : 

I  was  sensible  that,  to  so  helpless  a  creature  as  a 
poor  poet,  a  wife  and  family  were  incumbrances, 
which  a  species  of  prudence  would  bid  him  shun  ; 
but  when  the  alternative  was,  being  at  warfare  with 
myself,  on  account  of  habitual  follies,  to  give  them 

T  289 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

no  worse  name,  ,  .  .  I  must  have  been  a  fool  to 
have  hesitated  and  a  madman  to  have  made  another 
choice.  Besides,  I  had  in  **  my  Jean  "  a  long  and 
much-loved  fellow-creature's  happiness  or  misery 
among  my  hands,  and  who  could  trifle  with  such  a 
deposit  ? 

This  last  phrase  pleased  him  and  he  repeated 
it  more  than  once. 

What  he  could  not  get  from  Jean  he  had 
from  Mrs.  Dunlop  and  Mrs.  Riddell.  Mrs. 
Dunlop  was  the  "  honoured  friend,"  to  whom 
he  could  write  that  he  would  rather  send  her 
a  letter  of  true  comfort  than  compose  an  epic 
poem  equal  to  the  ''  Iliad  " — unbosom  himself 
about  his  lost,  his  ever  dear  Mary  ''whose 
bosom  was  fraught  with  truth,  honour,  con- 
stancy and  love  " — and  in  his  last  year  record 
that  her  correspondence  and  conversation 
were  '*  at  once  highly  entertaining  and  in- 
structive." Mrs.  Riddell  was  the  handsome 
and  clever  wife  of  Captain  Riddell.  He  wrote 
**  The  last  time  I  came  o'er  the  moor  "  for  her 
in  1793.  The  next  year  he  forfeited  her 
friendship  by  giving  a  friendly  imitation, 
when  drunk  and  in  the  company  of  Riddell 
and  others,  of  the  rape  of  the  Sabine  women 
— Burns  himself  laying  hands  on  Mrs. 
Riddell.  He  wrote  to  apologise,  and  wrote 
**  amid  the  horrors  of  the  damned."  A  year 
later  she  renewed  the  friendship  with  the 
290 


The  Tenth  Muse 

present  of  a  book.  She  afterwards  wrote 
what  Henley  thought  *'the  best  thing  written 
of  him  by  a  contemporary  critic."  Burns 
praised  her  verses  and  her  power  of  not  con- 
cealing either  her  likes  or  dislikes. 

Burns  might  have  said   of  himself — and 
said  it  much  better — what  Patmore  says  : 

Whene'er  I  come  where  ladies  are, 
How  sad  soever  I  was  before.  .  .  . 

He  was  like  a  frost-bound  ship  set  free  by 
the  ''  sudden  polar  spring  '* : 

Out  of  the  North,  where  life  did  freeze 
Into  the  haven  where  they  would  be. 

He  liked  women  and  could  not  be  without 
one — one  present,  one  past,  and  one  future  : 

Great  love  I  bear  to  a'  the  fair, 
Their  humble  slave,  an'  a'  that.  .  .  . 

After  Maria  Riddell  had  dismissed  him  he 
took  to  a  Miss  Lorimer,  for  whom  he  wrote 
**  Beyond  thee,  dearie,  beyond  thee,  dearie.*' 
The  occasion  of  this  particular  poem  was  his 
friend  Gillespie's  passion  for  her.  But  she  ran 
away  and  married  an  Englishman  who  soon 
left  her.  She  was  his  **  Chloris,"  his  muse, 
**  mistress  or  friend,  or  what  you  will,  in  the 
guileless  simplicity  of  Platonic  love,"  and  he 
compares  her  with  Sterne's  Eliza.     He  tells 

291 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Thomson  :  "  To  my  lovely  Friend  you  are 
indebted  for  many  of  your  best  songs  of 
mine,"  and,  warming  to  the  subject,  says  that 
his  recipe  for  being  "  more  than  ordinary  in 
song  "  is  to  put  himself  *'  in  the  regimen  of 
admiring  a  fine  woman."  And  lover  as  he 
was,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Burns  wrote 
best  for  women  whom  he  could  never  attain, 
or  even  think  of  attaining,  like  the  **bonie 
Leslie/'  As  a  poet  he  demanded  beauty  and 
adored  it,  but  as  a  man  *'  kindness,  sweet 
kindness  "  could  be  enough.  Often  he  wrote, 
in  the  tradition  of  the  old  songs  and  ballads, 
from  the  woman's  point  of  view,  as  in  ''  What 
can  a  young  lassie  do  wi'  an  auld  man  "  and 
'*  The  bonie  lad  that's  far  awa  "  ;  and  at 
other  times  he  wrote  for  men,  for  men  cheer- 
fully drinking  together.  Or  again,  he  knew 
very  well  the  traditional  or  proverbial  attitude 
towards  women.  If  he  had  a  tyrant  wife,  he 
said : 

I'd  break  her  spirit,  or  I'd  break  her  heart : 

I'd  charm  her  with  the  magic  of  a  switch, 

I'd  kiss  her  maids  and  kick  the  perverse  bitch. 

There  are  many  other  poems  like  this,  where 
he  simply  expresses  the  point  of  view  of  a 
husband  of  his  class  and  time,  as  in — 

If  ye  gie  a  woman  a'  her  will, 
Guid  faith  !  she'll  soon  o'ergang  ye. 
292 


The  Tenth  Muse 

He  can  write  admirably  in  this  traditional 
vein,  as  in  ''  Kellyburn  Braes  "  with  its  pro- 
verbial ''  But  ne'er  was  in  Hell  till  I  met  wi* 
a  wife  "  ;  or  in  "  O,  for  ane-and-twenty,  Tam," 
where  the  girl  longs  for  the  three  years  to 
pass  which  will  set  her  free  of  her  family  : 

And  then  comes  ane-and-twenty,  Tam ! 

In  Burns,  as  in  the  earlier  lyrists  of  Scot- 
land, and  more  perfectly,  love  and  a  natural 
rusticity  are  in  complete  and  most  happy 
accord.    The  women  have  an  outdoor  grace — 

Blythest  bird  upon  the  bush 

Had  ne'er  a  lighter  heart  than  she. 

They  are  like  the  rose  of  June ;  they  are  as 
fresh  as  a  May  morning,  as  sweet  as  evening 
among  the  new  hay,  and  as  blithe  and  artless 
as  lambs.  Only  women  like  these,  and  men 
like  their  lovers  from  the  fields  and  the  hills, 
could  express  themselves  in  words  and 
rhythms  so  light  and  so  fresh  as  these,  for 
example : 

Near  me,  near  me, 

Laddie,  lie  near  me ! 
Long  hae  I  lain  my  lane — 

Laddie,  lie  near  me ! 

It  IS  as  near  to  the  music  as  nonsense  could 
be,  and  yet  it  is  perfect  sense.  No  other 
poet  praises  youth  equally  well  for  the  cheerful 

293 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets    1 

and  active  sides  of  its  characteristic  virtues. 
Spirit  and  body  are  one  in  it — so  sweet  and 
free  is  the  body  and  so  well  satisfied  is  the 
spirit  to  inhabit  it.  If  they  are  sometimes 
sorrowful,  either  they  will  die  quickly  of 
sorrow  or  they  will  forget.  Few  poems  are 
more  unlike  than  these  to  the  literature  of 
*'  emotion  remembered  in  tranquillity."  They 
seem  almost  always  to  be  the  immediate  fruit 
of  a  definite  and  particular  occasion.  They 
are  not  solitary  poetry  like  "  I  cannot  give 
what  men  call  love/'  which  never  was  to  be 
spoken  except  to  the  unpeopled  air.  They 
suggest  instantly  two  persons,  the  lover,  the 
beloved,  one  of  them  speaking  or  singing  in 
a  voice  which  does  not  know  ennui  or 
melancholy,  or  more  than  one  feeling  at  any 
one  moment ;  and  the  lover  and  the  beloved 
are  young  and  of  good  stature,  with  bright  ^ 
eyes,  ruddy  skins,  and  feet  that  can  run  and 
dance.  They  are  a  superb  expression,  with  a 
few  variations,  of  what  a  man  of  simple  and 
hearty  nature,  full  of  blood,  feels  at  the  sight 
of  a  woman  worthy  to  awaken  his  desire. 
But  lover  of  individual  women  as  Burns  was, 
his  poems  do  not  individualise :  they  call  up 
images  only  of  woman,  of  youth  and  of  desire. 
In  the  matter  of  love,  Walter  Savage 
Landor  was  an  occasional  poet.  He  wrote 
graceful  compliments  and  descriptions ;  he 
294 


The  Tenth  Muse 

reached  a  height  once  or  twice  only  and  that 
through  memory.  He  is  the  restrained  poet 
of  dalliance,  and  evidently  knew  it,  because 
he  explained  once  in  prose  and  once  in  verse 
that  those  who  truly  love  cannot  write  love- 
poetry.  Browning  said  of  him  when  he  was 
an  old  man  :  ''  Whatever  he  may  profess  the 
thing  he  really  loves  is  a  pretty  girl  to  talk 
nonsense  with."  To  the  end  his  ''  courtly 
manners  towards  ladies  "  made  him  ''  chivalry 
incarnate,"  and  he  would  offer  flowers  for  a 
song  to  the  young  woman  who  sang  ''Kathleen 
Mavourneen,"  ''  Within  a  Mile  of  Edinboro' 
Town"  and  ''Auld  Robin  Gray,"  while  the 
tears  streamed  down  his  face.  When  Eliza 
Lynn,  afterwards  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton,  had 
been  to  see  him,  he  wrote  :  ''  What  a  charm 
it  is  even  at  the  close  of  life  to  be  cared  for 
by  the  beautiful  and  gentle,  and  to  see  them 
come  out  from  the  warm  sunshine  and  the 
sweet  flowers,"  a  feeling  which  he  has  not 
matched  in  his  poetry.  He  wrote  a  poem  to 
the  daughter  and  granddaughter  of  one  of 
his  early  loves,  and  to  the  niece  and  grand- 
niece  of  another.  Rose  Aylmer. 

He  was  twenty-one,  and  she  seventeen, 
when  he  met  Rose  Aylmer  at  Swansea  in 
1796.  They  used  to  walk  together  to  Briton 
Ferry  and  along  the  Tawe.  She  lent  him 
the  book,  ''  The  Progress  of  Romance,"  which 

295 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

contained  the  origin  of  *'Gebir."  But  in 
1800  she  went  to  India  and  died  when  still 
twenty.  Her  half-sister  sent  him  a  lock  of 
Rose  Aylmer  s  hair,  and  among  his  things 
after  his  death  was  found  a  packet,  with  the 
inscription  **  Rose  Aylmer's  Hair,"  containing 
hair  *'of  a  light  amber  tint  or  .  .  .  sunlit 
gold,  and  of  a  beautiful  texture."  He  twice 
or  thrice  recalled  her  in  his  verses ;  once  in 
**  Abertawy,"  a  poor  poem  in  a  mood  probably 
better  suited  for  prose ;  and  once  in  the 
famous  **  Ah  what  avails  the  sceptred  race," 
an  exquisite  poem  where  the  woman's  names 
are  used  with  most  fortunate  skill,  but  possibly 
also  an  overpraised  poem  because  its  grave 
manner  and  lack  of  sensuous  imagery  invite 
a  scrutiny  which  it  cannot  altogether  sustain. 
Wales  gave  him  two  other  mistresses, 
lone  and  lanthe,  or  Jones  and  Jane.  Mr. 
Stephen  Wheeler,  however,  in  his  ''  Letters 
and  unpublished  writings  of  Landor,"  gives 
some  reason  for  believing  that  he  had  met 
lone  before — a  stanza  that  mentions  her 
belonging  to  1793,  his  first  year  at  Oxford  : 

"  Tell  me  what  means  that  sigh,"  love  said, 
When  on  her  shoulder  I  reclined  my  head  ; 
And  I  could  only  tell  her  that  it  meant 
The  sigh  that  swells  the  bosom  with  content. 

Nothing   is   known  of  the  charming  Jones, 
296 


The  Tenth  Muse 

except  that  she  probably  gave  way  to  lanthe 
(Sophia  Jane  Swift).  The  verses  he  had  once 
written  for  Neaera  he  now  offered  to  lanthe, 
after  a  change  of  only  the  name,  and  he 
submitted  to  her  caprice  the  choice  of  poems 
for  his  '*  Simonidea  "  of  1806.  A  year  before 
this  his  father  died  and  Landor  was  a  rich 
man,  and  of  the  next  five  or  six  years  he 
spent  much  in  frivolous  living  at  Bath, 
Clifton,  and  elsewhere.  **  His  flirtations," 
writes  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin,  "were  numerous 
and  were  carried  fan  There  is  even  not 
wanting,  in  his  dealings  with  and  his  language 
concerning  women  during  this  brief  period, 
a  touch  of  commonplace  rakishness,  a  shadow 
of  vulgarity  nowhere  else  to  be  discerned  in 
the  ways  of  this  most  unvulgar  of  mankind." 
His  eldest,  but  slightly  younger  sister,  Eliza- 
beth, warned  him  against  any  ill-advised 
marriage,  saying:  "Birth  and  good  fortune 
are  not  requisites,  but  good  disposition  and  a 
good  understanding  are ;  and  how  many 
innocents,  only  for  being  pretty,  have  you  all 
your  life  been  thinking  sensible."  When  he 
was  thirty-six,  nevertheless,  he  married  the 
pretty  woman  Julia  Thuillier,  sixteen  years 
younger  than  himself,  who  soon  turned  out 
to  be  "agreeable — to  every  one  but  me.'' 
Nearly  forty  years  later  he  was  praising  a  girl 
whose  curled  gold  hair  fell  to  her  waist,  say- 

297 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

ing  it  was  *'  the  most  wonderfully  beautiful 
golden  hair  he  had  seen  since  his  wife's  "  ;  he 
bragged  that  he  had  married  her  mainly  for 
her  hair  and  because  she  had  neither  money 
nor  accomplishments  ;  and  he  recalled  that  if 
he  had  waited  a  year  he  might  have  married 
lanthe  whose  husband  then  died.  Mrs. 
Landor  is  said  to  have  interrupted  the  poet's 
reading  of  his  own  verses  during  the  honey- 
moon to  look  at  a  Punch  and  Judy  show ; 
she  bore  him  some  children,  but  he  spent 
more  and  more  of  his  life  apart  and  far 
distant  from  them  all.  When  he  was  an 
old  man  he  repeated  the  lines  of  Milton 
about  Eve  the  bride : 

Yielded  with  coy  submission,  modest  pride, 
And  sweet,  reluctant,  amorous  delay, 

and  said  that  he  would  rather  have  written 
them  than  all  the  poetry  written  since  Milton's 
time. 

Almost  twenty  years  after  his  marriage 
lanthe,  now  for  the  second  time  widowed  as 
Madame  de  Moland^,  met  Landor  at  Florence, 
and  they  remained  upon  terms  of  polite  and 
affectionate  friendship  until  her  death  in  1851  ; 
'*  tender,  respectful,  playful,  with  his  old- 
world  courtesy,"  wrote  the  admiring  Mrs. 
Linton,  with  her  he  was  at  his  best,  and  her 
grandchildren  were  dearest  to  him  of  all 
298 


The  Tenth  Muse 

children.  It  pleased  him  that  she  should 
plant  four  mimosa  trees  round  the  place 
marked  in  his  own  garden  at  Fiesole  for  his 
grave,  nor  did  he  shrink  from  composing  the 
epitaph  : 

Lo !  where  the  four  mimosas  blend  their  shade 
In  calm  repose  at  last  is  Landor  laid  ; 
For  ere  he  slept  he  saw  them  planted  here 
By  her  his  soul  had  ever  held  most  dear. 

He  hoped  she  might  see  his  grave.  But 
she  died  before  him,  and  he  was  not  buried 
between  the  mimosas. 

Landor,  like  Waller,  had  the  secret  of 
writing  about  those  whom  he  professed  to 
care  for  very  much,  as  if  he  cared  for  them 
but  little.  He  seems  most  genuine  when 
he  is  only  gallant.  When  he  thought  the 
Countess  was  about  to  marry  a  Duke,  he 
seriously  addressed  to  her  the  lines : 

.  .   .  Go,  and  go  happy,  light  of  my  past  days, 
Consoler  of  my  present !  thou  whom  Fate 
Alone  could  sever  from  me  !  one  step  higher 
Must  yet  be  mounted,  high  as  was  the  last : 
Friendship  with  faltering  accent  says  "  Depart, 
And  take  the  highest  seat  below  the  crown'd." 

The  best  he  wrote  upon  her  was  the  com- 
pliment : 

I  wonder  not  that  Youth  remains 
With  you,  wherever  else  she  flies : 

Where  could  she  find  such  fair  domains. 
Where  bask  beneath  such  sunny  eyes  .'* 

299 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

No  man  in  the  nineteenth  century  wrote  so 
many  marmoreal  nothings  about  love,  poems 
apparently  born  dead,  so  completely  without 
a  breath  are  they  to-day.  '*  Remembered 
loves  make  Byron's  self  sincere,"  wrote 
Landor  himself,  but  though  they  made  Landor 
also  sincere,  they  produced  only  '*  Rose 
Aylmer."  By  abstraction  he  becomes  mar- 
moreal ;  by  approaching  very  near  to  reality 
he  gains  warmth,  but  comes  also  too  often 
to  a  point  where  prose  seems  to  be  necessary  ; 
as,  for  example,  in  the  charming  *'  Here, 
where  precipitate  spring,"  which  describes  a 
girl  on  tip-toe  for  orange-blossoms,  but  in 
vain  until  he  bent  down  a  branch  and  gathered 
some,  and  at  last  she  held  one  forth  : 

Whether  for  me  to  look  at  or  to  take 

She  knew  not,  nor  did  I  ;  but  taking  it 

Would  best  have    solved    (and    this   she  felt)  her 

doubt. 
I  dared  not  touch  it  ;  for  it  seemed  a  part 
Of  her  own  self ;  fresh,  full,  the  most  mature 
Of  blossoms,  yet  a  blossom  ;  with  a  touch 
To  fall,  and  yet  unfallen.     She  drew  back 
The  boon  she  tender'd,  and  then,  finding  not 
The  ribbon  at  her  waist  to  fix  it  in, 
Dropt  it,  as  loth  to  drop  it,  on  the  rest. 

A  very  large  number  of  these  occasional 
poems   have   now   ceased   to  be  intelligible. 
Not  all  his  artifices  can  hide  the  spirit  perhaps 
essentially  Landor  s,  the  spirit  of — 
300 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Come,  Sleep  !  but  mind  ye  !  if  you  come  without 
The  little  girl  that  struck  me  at  the  rout, 
By  Jove  !  I  would  not  give  you  half-a-crown 
For  all  your  poppy-heads  and  all  your  down. 

Once  he  addresses  love  as  ''  perfidious  boy," 
and  I  feel  that  if  only  he  had  used  the  deli- 
berate systematic  artifice  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  his  cold  frivolity  and  lofty  dalliance 
would  be  more  effectual,  and  his  playfulness 
from  a  '* gentleman  of  thirty-two"  would  be 
still  better  if  turned  by  Prior.  It  explains 
nothing,  but  his  defect  was  one  of  style ;  he 
wrote  in  two  dead  languages.  He  was  self- 
centred  enough  to  have  made  a  great  lyric 
poet,  but  this  defect  prevented  him  from 
doing  more  than  make  himself  a  pathetic 
object — sending  a  lady  the  last  flowers  which 
she  **  may  ever  from  his  hand  receive  "  ; — or 
telling  one  whose  portrait  he  received  that 
if  only  he  could  hold  her  hand  ''  to  the  last 
clasp,"  he  would  die  and  leave  ''  but  one  man 
happier  here  below  "  ; — or  having  mimosas 
planted  round  his  intended  grave  by  his  twice- 
married  Countess  and  possible  Duchess,  thirty 
or  forty  years  before  he  died ;  best  of  all, 
because  most  graceful  and  insincere,  writing 
to  one  of  his  **  three  Roses  "  : 

If  by  my  death  I  win  a  tear, 
O  Rose,  why  should  I  linger  here  ? 
If  my  departure  cost  you  two, 
Alas !  I  shall  be  loth  to  go. 

301 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

In  his  own  time  some  one  accused  him  of 
not  feeling  deeply  and  so  not  piercing  the 
passive  world  with  his  pen,  and  he  in- 
geniously but  disingenuously  replies  with  the 
usual  poet's  pretext — ''While  the  heart  bleeds, 
the  hand  presses  it  close,"  and  therefore  can- 
not use  a  pen.  Some  deficiency  there  must 
have  been  to  set  against  his  being  the  most 
genuinely  polite  man  in  Europe,  unless  that 
in  itself  was  a  great  enough  deficiency.  It 
is  very  probable  that  he  liked  stupid  and 
easy  women  best.  He  fell  naturally  into 
a  patronising  tone  towards  women  when  he 
was  not  flattering,  and  in  his  "  Imaginary 
Conversations  "  he  knows  nothing  between 
the  lofty  exalted  womanliness  which  he  might 
have  borrowed  from  literature,  and  the 
kittenish  vacuity  which  looks  as  if  it  might 
be  what  he  was  used  to  in  living  women. 
I  cannot  agree  with  Mr.  Colvin's  implication 
when  he  says  that  if  Landor  ''was  inclined 
to  trifle  with  the  most  serious  of  things,  love, 
that  is  a  fault  by  which  the  quality  of  a 
man's  life  suffers,  but  not  necessarily  the 
quality  of  his  song ;  and  experiences  both 
more  transient  and  more  reckless  than  his 
have  made  of  a  Burns  or  Heine  the  exponents 
of  the  passions  for  all  generations."  There 
is  as  little  resemblance  between  the  lives,  as 
between  the  poetry,  of  Landor  and  Burns. 
302 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Landor  was  apparently  a  wealthy  and  gentle- 
manly trifler,  and  in  being  so  he  differed 
more  from  Burns  than  from  the  Puritan,  and 
far  more  than  from  the  man  about  town. 
To  Landor  'Move"  was  a  luxury  which 
became  a  comfort  and  necessity.  What  it 
was  to  Burns  is  not  so  easy  to  say  because 
Burns  was  all  youth  and  genius,  and  an 
altogether  rarer  phenomenon  ;  it  was  in- 
separable from  his  genius  and  youth,  and 
from  his  life ;  all  of  him  burnt  like  a  flame 
in  a  caress  and  in  a  song  ;  and  his  conduct 
is  not  to  be  taken  apart  and  judged  by  those 
who  have  leisure  for  it,  as  Landor's  may  be. 
What  Landor  thought  of  himself  in  the 
matter  he  shows  in  a  letter  to  Browning. 
His  imagination,  like  his  heart,  has  always 
been  with  the  women,  *'  I  mean  the  young," 
he  adds,  ''for  I  cannot  separate  that  adjective 
from  that  substantive,"  and  he  goes  on  to  say 
that  his  women  raise  Shakespeare  to  his 
"  immeasurable  superiority." 

Byron  is  nearer  to  Landor  than  Heine  or 
Burns,  but  still  far  enough  away.  They  are 
alike  chiefly  in  their  worldly  position  and  the 
way  they  took  advantage  of  it;  but  Byron, 
though  he  could  stoop  to  Claire  Clairmont 
and  then  treat  her,  the  mother  of  his  child, 
with  studied  frigidity  for  years,  could  yet 
ibandon  himself  to  his  passion  with  a  frank- 

303 


Feminine   Influence  on  the  Poets 

ness  which  has  its  admirable  side ;  nothing 
of  the  kind  is  recorded  of  Landor.  Byron 
began  to  have  decided  inclinations  for 
particular  girls  when  he  was  eight  or  nine, 
and  was  but  fifteen  when  he  fell  in  love  with 
Mary  Anne  Chaworth,  his  fourth  cousin. 
She  was  then  seventeen  and  already  engaged 
to  John  Musters,  whom  she  married,  in 
spite  of  an  affection  for  Byron,  two  years 
later,  in  1805.  The  one  or  at  least  the  ruling 
passion  in  Byron's  early  poems  was  this  for 
Mary  Chaworth  ;  but  those  relating  to  her 
were  apparently  not  written  until  after  her 
marriage,  when  his  attachment  was  hopeless. 
Even  at  that  early  date  he  said  practically 
what  he  said  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  later, 
that  had  he  married  her,  perhaps  the  whole 
tenor  of  his  life  would  have  been  different : 
in  verses  published  in  1807  he  wrote : 

If  thou  wert  mine,  had  all  been  hush'd  : — 
This  cheek,  now  pale  from  early  riot, 

With  Passion's  hectic  ne'er  had  flush'd, 
But  bloom'd  in  calm  domestic  quiet. 

He  also  says  distinctly  : 

Ah !  since  thy  angel  form  is  gone, 

My  heart  no  more  can  rest  with  any  ; 

But  what  it  sought  in  thee  alone. 
Attempts,  alas !  to  find  in  many. 

So,  'Xhilde  Harold"  *'had  sighed  to  many 
304 


The  Tenth  Muse 

though  he  loved  but  one,  and  that  loved  one, 
alas  !  could  ne'er  be  his." 

Mr.  Richard  Edgcumbe  in  his  '*  Byron  :  the 
Last  Phase"  has  given  some  good  reasons 
for  believing  that  Mary  Chaworth  is  the 
Thyrza  of  the  poems  "  To  Thyrza  "  and  of 
'*  Childe  Harold,"  II,  9,  though  '*  whose  Love 
and  Life  together  fled "  is  not  obviously 
applicable  to  her.  Mr.  Edgcumbe  shows 
that  Mary  was  parted  from  her  husband  in 
1813.  In  January  1814,  Byron  introduced 
Mary  to  his  sister,  Augusta  Leigh,  and  in 
April  was  born  Medora,  apparently  the  child 
of  Mary  and  Byron.  There  is  some  prob- 
ability that  Byron  consented  to  a  separation 
from  his  wife  in  1816  '*in  order  to  shield 
Mary  from  the  possible  consequences  of  a 
public  investigation  into  her  conduct  prior  to 
his  marriage "  ;  and  that  it  was  to  shelter 
Mary,  in  obedience  to  a  compact  with  Byron, 
and  to  make  sure  that  Byron's  fortune  should 
come  to  her  own  children,  that  Mrs.  Leigh 
kept  silence  before  the  insinuations  against 
her — that  Medora  was  her  own  child. 

Byron  certainly  did  not  lose  all  his  power 
of  whole-hearted  affection  when  Mary 
Chaworth  was  married.  Edleston,  a  Cam- 
bridge chorister,  he  loved  "more  than  any 
human  being " ;  he  compared  him  and 
himself  with  Pylades  and  Orestes,  and  said 

u  305 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

they  met  every  day  at  Cambridge  without 
**one  tiresome  moment";  and  it  has  been 
conjectured  that  the  poems  '*To  Thyrza" 
were  inspired  by  his  death.  But  his  half- 
sister,  Augusta,  who  was  five  years  older 
than  himself,  was  the  one  person  whom  he 
loved  with  complete  intimacy  and  lack  of 
affectation.  In  "  Stanzas  to  Augusta,"  one  of 
those  entirely  personal  and  all  but  private 
poems  so  characteristic  of  modern  poetry,  he 
said : 

When  Fortune  changed — and  Love  fled  far, 
And  Hatred's  shafts  flew  thick  and  fast, 

Thou  wert  the  solitary  star 

Which  rose  and  set  not  to  the  last.  .  .  . 

Of  her,  he  said  :  "  There's  more  in  one  soft 
word  of  thine  than  in  the  world's  defied 
rebuke,"  and  ''The  Love  which  my  Spirit 
hath  painted  it  never  hath  found  but  in 
Thee'' :  he  thought  they  were  "  Beings  who 
ne'er  each  other  can  resign."  For  her  he 
kept  his  admirable  Alpine  journal  in  1816. 

Byron  married  in  181 5  a  clever  and  pretty 
heiress.  Miss  Anna  Isabella  Milbanke.  He 
thought,  like  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu 
and  George  Meredith,  that  men  and  women 
should  marry  on  lease,  but  soon  after  his 
own  marriage  he  also  thought  he  would 
renew  his  own  lease  ''  though  the  next  term 
306 


The  Tenth  Muse 

were  for  ninety-and-nine  years  "  ;  and  before, 
he  had  said  *'  She  is  so  good  a  person  that — 
that — in  short  I  wish  I  was  a  better."  His 
disagreement  with  Lady  Byron  and  early 
separation  was  one  of  the  principal  influences 
on  his  life,  as  it  gave  him  a  continual 
grievance,  helped  to  exile  him,  and  ripened 
his  conception  of  himself  as  a  tragic  figure 
upon  the  canvas  of  Europe.  As  late  as  1820 
he  wrote  the  following  verses  after  seeing 
Lady  Byron  announced  as  patroness  at  a 
Charity  Ball : 

What  matter  the  pangs  of  a  husband  and  father. 
If  his  sorrows  in  exile  be  great  or  be  small, 

So  the  Pharisee's  glories  around  her  she  gather. 
And  the  Saint  patronises  her  **  Charity  Ball." 

What  matters — a  heart  which,  though  faulty,  was 
feeling 
Bedriven  to  excesses  which  once  could  appal — 
That  the  Sinner  should  suffer  is  only  fair  dealing, 
As  the  Saint  keeps  her  charity  back  for  '*  the 
Ball " ! 

He  wrote  nothing  for  her,  as  for  Mary 
Chaworth,  until  she  was  out  of  his  reach. 

Before  he  married  her — and  he  won  her 
with  difficulty  and  a  certain  sense  of  triumph 
— many  women  had  thrown  themselves  at 
the  author  of  ''  Childe  Harold "  and  had 
been  accepted  with  brief  but  mutual  gratitude. 
Such   was    Lady   Caroline    Lamb,    wife    of 

307 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

William  Lamb,  the  "  Ariel  "  with  hazel  eyes 
and  golden  hair,  who  went  to  his  rooms 
disguised  as  a  page  when  he  had  had  enough 
of  her ;  such  were  Lord  Oxford's  wife,  aged 
forty,  with  whom  he  thought  of  leaving 
England,  and  Lady  Frances  Wedderburn 
Webster,  to  whom  he  wrote  two  indifferent 
sonnets  as  '*  Genevra "  and,  as  Mr.  E.  H. 
Coleridge  thinks,  the  lines  '*  Remember  him, 
when  Passion's  power."  There  were  also  the 
'^Paphian  Girls"  of  the  Newstead  Abbey  orgies 
celebrated  in  ''  Childe  Harold,"  and  others, 
like  the  three  young  *'  Maids  of  Athens," 
whom  he  courted  in  vain,  in  vain  although 
he  gashed  his  breast  with  a  dagger  after  the 
Greek  fashion.  He  always  meant  *'topull  up 
and  marry,  if  any  one  will  have  me."  After  he 
had  left  Lady  Byron  there  were  no  more  noble 
English  ladies  for  him.  Claire  Clairmont 
came  to  him  soon  after  the  separation.  Later 
in  1816  Venice  gave  him  Marianna  Segati, 
his  landlord's  wife,  a  very  loose  dark-eyed 
woman  with  a  beautiful  voice  and  the  power 
of  convincing  Byron  that  she  was  his  and 
only  his.  In  18 18  followed  a  baker's  wife, 
Margarita  Cogni,  who  was  for  some  time  his 
housekeeper  :  with  her  ''  large  black  eyes  and 
face  like  Faustina's,  and  the  figure  of  a  Juno 
— tall  and  energetic  as  a  Pythoness,  with 
eyes  flashing  and  her  dark  hair  streaming 
308 


The  Tenth  Muse 

in  the  moonlight"  she  was  a  woman  after 
Byron's  own  heart,  one  of  his  own  heroines, 
a  kind  of  Medea,  a  creature  who  would 
plunge  a  poniard  wherever  he  told  her, 
and  into  himself  if  he  offended  her.  The 
Countess  Guiccioli,  the  young  wife  of  an 
old  man,  fell  in  love  with  him  in  1819  and 
during  most  of  the  following  years  they 
lived  together.  The  worst  thing  about  this 
satisfactory  union  was  that  Byron  advised 
her,  and  she  consented,  to  return  to  her 
husband  for  a  short  time  at  his  request. 
She  was  lovely,  clever,  and  admiring.  For 
her  he  wrote  **The  Prophecy  of  Dante" 
with  a  sonnet  of  dedication,  and  for  her  he 
promised,  but  without  fulfilment,  to  make  the 
continuation  of  '*  Don  Juan  "  more  **  guarded 
and  decorous  and  sentimental"  than  the 
opening.  Soon  after  their  meeting  Byron 
wrote  :  **  It  is  my  last  love.  As  to  libertinism, 
I  have  sickened  myself  of  that,  as  was  natural 
in  the  way  I  went  on,  and  I  have  at  least 
derived  that  advantage  from  vice,  to  love  in 
the  better  sense  of  the  word."  At  one  time 
he  spoke  of  changing  his  name  and  retiring 
with  her  to  France  or  America.  It  became 
a  matter-of-fact  attachment,  with  **  neither 
the  blindness  of  the  beginning,  nor  the 
microscopic  accuracy  of  the  close  to  such 
liaisons','   though   her  tears    could    prevent 

309 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

him  from  going  to  Greece  with  her  brother 
in  182 1.  Byron's  servant  said  of  him  :  **  It 
is  very  odd,  but  I  never  yet  knew  a  lady  that 
could  not  manage  my  lord,  except  my  lady." 
At  the  end  of  his  life,  it  was  his  opinion  that 
love  was  '*  a  sort  of  hostile  transaction,  very 
necessary  to  make  or  to  break  matches,  and 
keep  the  world  going,  but  by  no  means  a 
sinecure  to  the  parties  concerned  "  ;  that  lovers 
never  can  be  friends,  and  (thinking  possibly 
of  Augusta) — 

No  friend  like  to  a  woman  Earth  discovers, 
So  that  you  have  not  been  nor  will  be  lovers. 

When  he  was  eighteen  Byron  courted  not 
the  **cold  compositions  of  art"  but  "the 
effusions  that  spring  from  the  heart,"  and 
ever  after  he  lived  in  verse,  and  his  poetry 
was  a  direct  product  of  his  life,  piece  by 
piece.  No  other  English  poet  has  equalled 
him,  for  example,  in  work  like  the  '*  Epistle 
to  Augusta "  and  *'  There's  not  a  joy,"  of 
a  style  so  substantial  and  closely  related 
to  the  actual  that  by  some  it  might  be 
said  to  resemble  prose,  if  prose  could  ever 
be  proved  capable  of  such  massive  brevity. 
He  said  himself  that  the  fruits  of  successful 
Passion  were  "Youth  wasted — Minds  de- 
graded— Honour  lost,"  and  perhaps  his  great 
unsuccessful  passion  was  the  salt  of  his 
310 


The  Tenth  Muse 

too  easy  life.  The  first  fine  lines  that  he 
wrote,  when  he  was  twenty,  were  those  to 
Mary  Chaworth  beginning : 

Well !  thou  art  happy,  and  I  feel 
That  I  should  thus  be  happy  too.  .  .  . 

It  is  upon  the  plane  of  every  day  in  all 
but  expression,  onwards  from 

Thy  husband's  blest — and  'twill  impart 
Some  pangs  to  view  his  happier  lot : 

But  let  them  pass — Oh  !  how  my  heart 
Would  hate  him  if  he  lov'd  thee  not ! 

And  again  and  again,  as  in  "  The  Dream  "  of 
1816,  he  returned  to  this  experience  and 
always  with  the  same  passionate  if  calm 
solemnity.     Well  might  he  ask  : 

Think  you,  if  Laura  had  been  Petrarch's  wife, 
He  would  have  written  sonnets  all  his  life  ? 

And  it  is  remarkable  how  Byron  retained 
his  tenderness  through  all  his  crude  vice, 
the  tenderness  of  the  love  scene  between 
Juan  and  Haidde — the  lady  watching  her 
lover,  and  the  poet  himself  reflecting  that 
'*  Man,  to  man  so  oft  unjust,  is  always  so 
to  Women."  Nor  did  he  lose  the  power 
of  taking  flights,  though  they  were  short, 
into  the  empyrean,  in  the  strain  of  '*Clarensl 
sweet   Clarens,    birthplace   of    deep    Love " 

311 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

when  he  was  thinking  of  Rousseau  and  in 
the  presence  of  the  mountains.  But  it  was 
always  easier  and  better  for  him  to  follow 
the  method  of  the  very  early  ''  Remind  me 
not,  remind  me  not."  This  also  belongs  to 
1808,  and  it  must  be  quoted  to  illustrate 
further  what  appears  to  be  Byron's  almost 
literal  use  of  experience ; 

.  .  .  Can  I  forget — canst  thou  forget, 
When  playing  with  thy  golden  hair, 

How  quick  thy  fluttering  heart  did  move  ? 
Oh !  by  my  soul,  I  see  thee  yet, 

With  eyes  so  languid,  breast  so  fair. 
And  lips,  though  silent,  breathing  love. 

When  thus  reclining  on  my  breast, 

Those  eyes  threw  back  a  glance  so  sweet. 
As  half  reproached  yet  rais'd  desire. 
And  still  we  near  and  nearer  prest, 
And  still  our  glowing  lips  would  meet. 
As  if  in  kisses  to  expire. 

And  then  those  pensive  eyes  would  close. 
And  bid  their  lids  each  other  seek, 
Veiling  the  azure  orbs  below ; 
While  their  long  lashes'  darken'd  gloss 
Seem'd  stealing  o'er  thy  brilliant  cheek. 
Like  raven's  plumage  smooth'd  on  snow. 

Prose  could  hardly  be  more  close  to  the 
facts,  or,  if  it  could,  it  would  not  be.  When 
he  has  described  Zuleika  in  '*  The  Bride  of 
Abydos  "— 

The  light  of  Love,  the  purity  of  Grace, 
The  mind,  the  Music  breathing  from  her  face  .  ,  . 
312 


The  Tenth  Muse 

he  requests  the  reader  to  recollect  the  features 
of  '*  the  woman  whom  he  believes  to  be  the 
most  beautiful "  and  confidently  expects  his 
agreement  with  the  phrase.  Some,  at  least, 
would  have  understood  it  had  they  seen  the 
face  he  has  in  his  mind  ;  **  for,"  he  adds, 
*'  this  passage  is  not  drawn  from  imagination 
but  memory,  that  mirror  which  Affliction 
dashes  to  the  earth,  and  looking  down  upon 
the  fragments,  only  beholds  the  reflection 
multiplied!"  Even  '*  She  walks  in  beauty" 
was  inspired  by  a  particular  woman,  Anne 
Beatrix  Horton.  Knowing  this  inability  of 
Byron  to  keep  his  life  out  of  his  poetry  it  is 
small  wonder  that  ''  Manfred  "  has  been  used 
to  support  the  story  of  Byron's  love  for 
Augusta  Leigh.  Another  curious  instance 
of  Byron's  use  of  his  own  experience  and 
his  interest  in  beauty  is  the  note  to  *'  Don 
Juan,"  where  he  describes  Haidde's  hair 
flowing  in  **  long  auburn  waves  down  to 
her  heel,"  abundant  enough  to  ''  conceal 
her  person  if  allowed  at  large  to  run."  The 
note  relates  that  he  remembers  four  women 
with  hair  in  this  profusion,  three  English 
and  one  Levantine ;  only  one  had  dark  hair, 
and  the  Levantine's  was  ''  perhaps  the  lightest 
colour  of  the  four." 

A   description,   presumably  of  Margarita 
Cogni,  has  already  been  quoted ;  and  so  like 

313 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

it  is  the  fine  picture  of  Myrrha  in  ''  Sarda- 
napalus,"  that  it  must  have  been  the  original. 
Myrrha,  the  Greek  mistress  of  Sardanapalus, 
is  the  noblest  figure  of  a  woman  in  Byron's 
poetry.  She  has  a  heart  "  that  loves  without 
self-love/'  she  is  one  who  will  **  dare  all 
things  except  survive  what  I  have  loved." 
When  Sardanapalus  mounts  the  pyre,  she 
goes  with  him,  asking  : 

And  dost  thou  think 
A  Greek  girl  dare  not  do  for  love,  that  which 
An  Indian  widow  braves  for  custom  ? 

Such  are  the  women  he  most  delights  to 
depict — like  the  "wildly  beautiful  "  Spanish 
maids  with  daggers  in  their  sashes,  fit  for 
patriotic  battle  as  well  as  love ;  or  like 
Gulbeyaz  in  a  fury,  "a  beautiful  embodied 
storm,"  women  equal  to  the  lover  in  ''The 
Giaour " : 

The  cold  in  clime  are  cold  in  blood, 
Their  love  can  scarce  deserve  the  name  ; 
But  mine  was  like  the  lava  flood 

That  boils  in  ^Etna's  breast  of  flame.  .  .  . 

No  other  poet  has  drawn  physical  women 
with  such  exactness  from  eyelashes  to  ankles, 
and  yet  remained  a  poet,  as  Byron.  He 
describes  them  a  little  too  much — at  least 
in  *' Don  Juan" — after  the  manner  of  a 
314 


The  Tenth  Muse 

connoisseur  ;  but  it  was  an  always  enthu- 
siastic connoisseur.  The  short  upper  lip 
of  Haidde,  as  he  thought  of  it,  probably 
did  make  him  sigh  '*ever  to  have  seen 
such."  He  explains  himself  when  he  con- 
tinues : 

She  was  one 
Fit  for  the  model  of  a  statuary 

(A  race  of  mere  impostors,  when  all's  done — 
I've  seen  much  finer  women,  ripe  and  real. 
Than  all  the  nonsense  of  their  stone  ideal). 

ril  tell  you  why  I  say  so,  for  't  is  just 

One  should  not  rail  without  a  decent  cause  : 
There  was  an  Irish  lady,  to  whose  bust 

I  ne'er  saw  justice  done,  and  yet  she  was 
A  frequent  model ;  and  if  e'er  she  must 

Yield  to  stern  Time  and   Nature's  wrinkling 
laws, 
They  will  destroy  a  face  which  mortal  thought 

Ne'er  compassed,  nor  less  mortal  chisel  wrought. 

It  was  part  of  Byron's  great  power,  not,  as 
so  many  poets  have  done,  to  create  a  world  of 
their  own  not  subject  to  earthly  laws,  but  to 
keep  his  verse  always  in  touch  with  the  actual 
world  of  his  own  time,  to  allow  the  circula- 
tion of  blood  between  his  poetry  and  his 
world  of  flesh,  shone  upon  by  the  very  sun 
and  blown  across  by  the  living  winds.  Even 
Burns  has  this  actuality  only  at  times. 

Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  in  his  '*  Romantic 
Movement   in   English    Poetry,"   has   made 

315 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

!  ! 

ridiculous  if  he  has  not  destroyed  the  belief 
that  Keats  was  an  impersonal  poet.  In  no 
matter  did  he  reveal  himself  more  carelessly 
than  in  his  feeling  towards  women.  He  was 
interested  in  women  and  in  his  attitude 
towards  them.  Towards  two  women  only 
did  he  feel  always  the  same,  towards  his 
young  sister  at  school,  whom  he  loved 
tenderly  without  condescension,  and  his 
sister-in-law  Georgiana,  the  ''  most  dis- 
interested woman  "  he  ever  knew,  to  whom 
he  wrote  perhaps  the  happiest  and  most 
friendly  of  all  his  letters,  full  of  respect 
and  void  of  ceremony.  But  for  his  letters 
to  these  two  and  to  his  brothers,  it  would 
not  be  easy  to  detect  the  homely  side  of 
Keats  in  the  spate  of  youth.  When  he 
was  turned  twenty  he  thought  as  much 
about  women  as  most  young  men  with  a 
strong  vein  of  sensuality  and  sensuousness. 
He  professed  to  like  "  the  idea  of  the  women 
being  a  little  profligate  "  at  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
when  he  saw  the  words  "  O  Isle  spoilt  by  the 
Milatary"  on  the  window  of  his  room  at 
Newport.  There  is  a  great  gusto  in  his  five 
verses  to  the  tune  of 

There's  a  blush  for  won't,  and  a  blush  for  sha  n't, 

And  a  blush  for  having  done  it : 
There's  a  blush  for  thought  and  a  blush  for  nought, 

And  a  blush  for  just  begun  it. 
316 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Yet  it  is  characteristic  of  Keats  to  end  the 
letter  beginning  with  this  song,  by  copying 
out  *'  When  I  have  fears  that  I  may  cease  to 
be."  He  is  continually  veering  between 
I* Why  don't  you,  as  I  do,  look  unconcerned 
at  what  may  be  called  more  particularly 
Heart-vexations  ?  They  never  surprise  me — 
lord  !  a  man  should  have  the  fine  point  of  his 
soul  taken  off  to  become  fit  for  this  world," 
which  was  his  advice  to  Reynolds — and  what 
he  said  a  year  later  about  Burns  :  ''  How  sad  it 
is  when  a  luxurious  imagination  is  obliged, 
in  self-defence,  to  deaden  its  delicacy  in  vul- 
garity and  things  attainable."  At  this  same 
moment  he  is  certain  of  nothing  but  **  the 
loliness  of  the  Heart's  affections  and  the 
:ruth  of  imagination."  The  difference  is  due 
Dartly  to  uncertainty  and  partly  to  inexperi- 
mce :  when  he  recommended  taking  off  the 
'  fine  point  "  he  had  not  considered  the  case 
3f  Burns.  He  was  in  the  company  of  young 
nen  who  **  call  good  wine  a  pretty  tipple,  and 
:all  getting  a  child  knockingout  an  apple ; "  and 
^et  to  one  of  them  who  was  about  to  be  married 
le  wrote  that  his  sensations  were  sometimes 
leadened  for  weeks  together,  but  that  he 
^earned  for  his  friend's  happiness  sometimes  as 
nuch  as  he  could  after  "the  lips  of  Juliet":  the 
:ontinuation  is  significant ;  his ''  rhodomontade 
n  chit-chat  "  might  have  deceived  his  friend 

317 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

on  these  points,  but  he  has  been  getting  more 
and  more  close  to  him,  **and  now  one  of  the 
first  pleasures  I  look  to  is  your  happy  Marriage 
— the  more  since  I  have  felt  the  pleasure  of 
loving  a  sister-in-law/'  He  adds  that  things 
like  these  have  made  him  resolved  to  be 
careful  of  his  health.  Nevertheless,  he  re- 
mained in  a  turbid  fever.  He  had  not  '*a 
right  feeling  towards  women  "  he  confessed, 
perhaps  because  they  fell  far  beneath  his 
boyish  imagination.  When  he  was  a  school- 
boy he  thought  ''  a  fair  woman  a  pure  God- 
dess ;  "  but  now  when  among  women  he  has 
"  evil  thoughts,  malice,  spleen  "  ;  he  cannot 
speak  or  be  silent,  is  full  of  suspicions  and 
in  a  hurry  to  be  gone.  Nevertheless,  he  has 
not  the  least  idea  that  men  who  think 
differently  are  more  short-sighted  in  their 
view  of  women  ;  he  must  wait  for  a  change 
in  himself,  and  meantime  ''  I  do  think  better 
of  womankind  than  to  suppose  they  care 
whether  Mister  John  Keats  five  feet  high 
likes  them  or  not."  These  uncomfortable  fluc- 
tuations were  perhaps  among  the  penalties 
for  his  trifling,  like  Chatterton's,  with  girls 
of  various  conditions,  and  for  the,  at  any 
rate  superficial,  debauching  of  his  mind.  A 
little  later  he  tells  his  brother  Thomas  that 
he  thinks  he  will  be  able  to  conquer  his  pas- 
sions hereafter  better  than  he  has  done.    Both 

318 


The  Tenth   Muse 

letters  were  written  from  the  Highlands  where 
he  had  gone  partly  to  get  experience,  rub  off 
prejudice,  and  use  himself  to  hardship.  A 
little  later  the  voice  and  shape  of  a  woman 
had  haunted  him  two  days,  yet  he  '*  never 
was  in  love."  The  relief  was  poetry ;  he 
relapsed  into  those  abstractions  which  were 
his  only  life.  He  compared  the  same  woman 
to  a  tune  of  Mozart's  ;  he  was  not  in  love 
with  her.  This  was  Jane  Cox,  a  Charmian 
if  not  a  Cleopatra,  with  a  *'  rich  eastern  look," 
fine  eyes  and  fine  manners,  and  when  she 
came  into  the  room  she  made  ''an  impres- 
sion the  same  as  the  Beauty  of  a  Leopardess." 
He  went  on : 

She  is  a  fine  thing  speaking  in  a  worldly  way  : 
for  there  are  two  distinct  tempers  of  mind  in  which 
we  judge  of  things — the  worldly,  theatrical  and 
pantomimical  ;  and  the  unearthly,  spiritual  and 
ethereal — in  the  former  Buonaparte,  Lord  Byron 
and  this  Charmian  hold  the  first  place  in  our 
minds ;  in  the  latter,  John  Howard,  Bishop  Hooker 
rocking  his  child's  cradle,  and  you  my  dear  sister 
[Georgiana  Keats,  his  sister-in-law]  are  the  con- 
quering feelings.  As  a  Man  in  the  World  I  love 
the  rich  talk  of  a  Charmian  ;  as  an  eternal  Being  I 
love  the  thought  of  you.  I  should  like  her  to  ruin 
me,  and  I  should  like  you  to  save  me.  Do  not  think 
my  dear  Brother  from  this  that  my  Passions  are 
headlong  or  likely  to  be  ever  of  any  pain  to  you — 

**  I  am  free  from  Men  and  Pleasure  s  cares. 
By  dint  of  feelings  far  more  deep  than  theirs." 

319 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

In  this  same  long  letter  he  describes  an 
adventure  with  a  woman  whom  he  had  met 
twice  before,  by  passing  her  in  the  street,  turn- 
ing round  at  once  and  so  joining  her,  and  at  last 
arriving  at  her  rooms  in  34  Gloucester  Street, 
Queen  Square,  *'a  very  tasty  sort  of  place 
with  Books,  Pictures,  a  bronze  Statue  of 
Buonaparte,  Music,  ^olian  Harp  ;  a  Parrot, 
a  Linnet,  a  case  of  choice  Liqueurs,  etc."  As 
he  had  **  warmed  with  her,"  and  kissed  her 
before,  he  thought  it  would  be  *'  living  back- 
wards" not  to  do  so  again.  But  she  put 
him  off  though  not  prudishly,  in  fact  so  as 
to  give  him  more  pleasure  than  a  kiss.  He 
had  ''  no  libidinous  thought  about  her,"  she 
and  Georgiana  Keats  being  the  only  women 
of  his  own  age  whom  he  would  be  content  to 
know  for  their  '*  mind  and  friendship  alone." 
But  he  hopes  he  will  never  marry,  because 
'*  the  mighty  abstract  idea  I  have  of  Beauty 
in  all  things  stifles  the  more  divided  and 
domestic  happiness — an  amiable  wife  and 
sweet  children  I  contemplate  as  a  part  of  that 
Beauty,  but  I  must  have  a  thousand  of  those 
beautiful  particles  to  fill  up  my  heart."  And 
here  again  he  repeated  his  opinion  of  the 
generality  of  women  ;  they  appear  to  him 
"  as  children  to  whom  I  would  rather  give  a 
sugar-plum  than  my  time."  This  doubtless  is 
that  appearance  of  heartlessness  which  he  put 
320 


The  Tenth  Muse 

down  to  abstraction,  to  the  '^  mighty  abstract 
Idea  I  have  of  beauty  in  all  things,"  which 
made  him  say  that  sometimes  he  felt  not  the 
influence  of  a  passion  or  affection  for  a  whole 
week — ''and  so  long  this  sometimes  con- 
tinues, I  begin  to  suspect  myself,  and  the 
genuineness  of  my  feelings  at  other  times — 
thinking  them  a  few  barren  Tragedy  tears." 

Fanny  Brawne  probably  made  no  difference 
to  this  power  of  abstraction,  though  from  time 
to  time  she  kept  it  in  abeyance.  It  was  when 
he  had  known  her  for  two  years,  and  not  long 
before  his  death,  that  he  perceived  his  tendency 
"  to  class  women  with  roses  and  sweetmeats  " 
in  his  books.  He  met  Fanny  Brawne  soon 
after  the  "  Charmian,"  and  he  was  at  first 
more  critical  of  her.  *'  She  is  about  my 
height — with  a  fine  style  of  countenance  of 
the  lengthened  sort — she  wants  sentiment 
in  every  feature — she  manages  to  make  her 
hair  look  well  .  .  .  her  arms  are  good,  her 
hands  badish  ''  and  so  on.  Her  behaviour 
was  monstrous,  and  he  was  '*  forced  lately 
to  make  use  of  the  term  Minx."  She  was 
not  nineteen  :  Keats  was  twenty-three.  Later, 
about  the  time  he  was  writing  '*  St.  Agnes' 
Eve"  and  ''  Isabella,"  he  and  she  had  ** every 
now  and  then  a  chat  and  a  tiff/'  and  during 
that  spring  of  1819  he  wrote  **On  Indolence," 
^*  Bards  of    Passion    and   of  Mirth,"    **  To 

X  321 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Psyche,"  **On  a  Grecian  Urn,"  and  ''To  a 
Nightingale."  By  July  he  was  utterly  in 
love,  the  pain  of  love  being  equal  to  the 
pain  he  had  hitherto  known  through  the 
death  or  sickness  of  others.  ''  I  almost  wish 
we  were  butterflies "  he  told  her,  ''and  lived 
but  three  summer  days — three  such  days  with 
you  I  could  fill  with  more  delight  than  fifty 
common  years  could  ever  contain."  He 
insists  much  upon  her  beauty  "since  without 
that  I  could  never  have  lov'd  you."  He  was 
now  working  at  "Otho  the  Great"  and 
"  Lamia."  Even  when  he  was  not  thinking 
of  her  he  received  her  influence  and  a  tenderer 
nature  stealing  upon  him.  She  absorbed  him 
and,  looking  forward,  he  even  confessed  him- 
self willing  for  her  sake  to  meet  domestic 
cares.  His  two  luxuries  of  thought  were  her 
loveliness  and  the  hour  of  his  death,  and  now 
as  in  his  last  sonnet  he  wished  he  could  have 
both  together ;  he  would  take  a  sweet  poison 
from  her  lips  to  send  him  out  of  the  hated 
world.  His  jealousy  was  very  great,  and  he 
did  not  like  any  one  to  look  at  her  or  speak  to 
her.  Her  love  for  him  seems  to  have  been  no 
more  than  the  reflection  of  some  of  his  for  her, 
and  that  was  hot  as  Ludolph's  for  Auranthe 
in  "  Otho  the  Great  "— 

Now  I  follow  thee 
A  substance  or  a  shadow,  wheresoe 'er 

322 


The  Tenth  Muse 

Thou  leadest  me, — whether  thy  white  feet  press, 
With  pleasant  weight,  the  amorous-aching  earth. 
Or  thro'  the  air  thou  pioneerest  me, 
A  shade ! 

Love  and  poetry  were  together  in  his  mind. 
He  was  writing  *^  Lamia"  and  ''Hyperion," 
and  for  a  time  there  was  a  contest  between 
love  and  poetry.  He  was  '*  in  the  fever  "  for 
writing  ;  he  wanted  two  months  more  at  it  in 
August  1 819,  and  he  begged  his  mistress  to 
forgive  him  for  being  no  more  able  to  use 
soothing  words  than  if  he  were  in  a  charge  of 
cavalry ;  he  was  afraid  that  a  few  more 
moments'  thinkingof  her  would  ''uncrystallize 
and  dissolve"  him.  A  month  later  he  was 
still  weaning  himself  from  her,  and  just  able 
to  maintain  the  fine  balance  of  his  mind  ;  he 
was  writing  ''To  Autumn"  at  this  time. 
He  concealed  the  conflict  from  others ;  some 
did  not  even  know  that  he  was  in  love  with 
Miss  Brawne ;  and  he  could  write  in  that 
same  September  to  his  brother,  "  Nothing 
strikes  me  so  forcibly  with  a  sense  of  the 
ridiculous  as  love.  A  man  in  love  I  do 
think  cuts  the  sorriest  figure  in  the  world." 
A  month  later,  in  mid-October,  he  was 
copying  out  some  verses  without  "  any 
degree  of  content,"  so  he  wrote  to  her  to 
"see  if  that  will  assist  in  dismissing"  her 
from   his   mind.      He   had,    he    said,    been 

323 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

astonished  that  men  could  be  martyred 
for  reHgion  :  now  he  knew  that  he  could  be 
martyred  for  his  religion  which  was  Love. 
He  grew  ill ;  he  was  living  near  her  and 
more  jealous  than  ever ;  he  was  thinking  of 
how  illness  was  a  barrier  between  them,  and 
also  that  if  he  should  die  he  had  left  no 
immortal  work  behind  him.  He  wished  her 
to  see  how  unhappy  he  was  for  love  of  her ; 
not  to  think  of  anything  but  him.  When  she 
tended  him,  the  excitement  was  more  than  he 
could  bear ;  the  air  he  breathed  in  a  room 
without  her  was  unhealthy.  He  was  aban- 
doned to  his  love ;  *'  Be  serious  !  *'  he  cried, 
**  Love  is  not  a  plaything — and  again  do  not 
write  unless  you  can  do  it  with  a  crystal 
conscience."  Even  the  past  was  now  poisoned 
by  his  love  :  the  last  two  years  tasted  "like 
brass  "  on  his  palate.  He  set  sail  for  Italy, 
and  off  the  Isle  of  Wight  he  told  his  friend 
Brown  that  even  if  his  body  would  recover 
''  of  itself"  his  love  would  prevent  it.  "  You 
think"  he  wrote,  '*that  she  has  many  faults 
— but,  for  my  sake,  think  she  has  not  one  ! " 
He  seldom  thought  now  of  his  brother  and 
sister,  but  eternally  saw  Miss  Brawne 
**  eternally  vanishing."  At  Naples  the  silk 
lining  she  put  in  his  travelling  cap  ''scalds 
my  head."  At  Rome  he  wrote:  "There  is 
one  thought  enough  to  kill  me  ;  I  have  been 

324 


The  Tenth  Muse 

veil,  healthy,  alert,  etc.,  walking  with  her, 
md  now — the  knowledge  of  contrast,  feeling 
or  light  and  shade,  all  that  information 
primitive  sense  [of  the  word]  )  necessary  for 
L  poem,  are  great  enemies  to  the  recovery  of 
he  stomach."  But  he  did  not  write  poetry, 
tnd  after  a  few  months  of  ''posthumous  life" 
m  a  sick-bed  he  died. 

Keats'  poetry  echoes  the  changes  of  his 
eelings  towards  women,  and  as  most  of  it 
v^as  written  before  his  meeting  with  Fanny 
Jrawne  it  belongs  to  the  time  of  his  ''old 
iberty  ''— 

When  every  fair  one  that  I  saw  was  fair 
Enough  to  catch  me  in  but  half  a  snare, 
Nor  keep  me  there. 

i  shallow  sensuality  is  prominent  in  some 
f  the  earliest  poems,  as  in — 

.ight  feet,  dark  violet  eyes,  and  parted  hair  ; 

loft  dimpled  hands,  white  neck  and  creamy  breast, 

r  in — 

lappy  is  England,  sweet  her  artless  daughters  ; 

Enough  their  simple  loveliness  for  me, 
Enough  their  whitest  arms  in  silence  clinging  ,  .  . 

r,  with  the  addition  of  emotion,  in  the  verse 
3  Cupid  in  "  Endymion  " — 

God  of  warm  pulses,  and  dishevelFd  hair, 
And  panting  bosoms  bare  ! 

325 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

At  the  same  time  the  frankness  is  excep- 
tional, and  few  modern  poems  but  Rossetti's 
**  Jenny "  can  be  found  of  the  same  kind  as 
the  lines  of  1817  beginning : 

Unfelt,  unheard,  unseen, 

I've  left  my  litde  queen, 
Her  languid  arms  in  silver  slumber  lying.  .  . 

A  poem  which  is  like  Donne's  *'The  sun 
rising."  But  too  often  he  degrades  the 
objects  of  his  desire  by  a  perhaps  rather 
unreal,  purely  physical  treatment,  as  in — 

Small  good  to  one  who  had  by  Mulla's  stream. 
Fondled  the  maidens  with  the  breasts  of  cream. 

Where  '*  breasts  of  cream "  is  as  mean  an 
expression  as  *'a  pat  of  butter."  He  so 
easily  makes  a  woman  into  an  attractive 
lower  animal,  as  where  he  describes  one 
**  sweet  as  a  musk  rose  upon  new-made 
hay,  with  all  her  limbs  on  tremble,  and  her 
eyes  shut  softly  up  alive."  He  certainly  had 
shown  the  tendency  he  spoke  of,  ''to  class 
women  with  roses  and  sweetmeats."  It  w^as 
natural  to  him  ;  it  is  natural  to  a  great  many 
others ;  and  he  has  expressed  it  with  vivid 
truth :  but  it  is  too  often  trivial  in  phrases 
like  *'  a  lovely  wreath  of  girls  dancing  their 
sleek  hair  into  tangled  curls,"  or  ''a  paradise 
of  lips  and  eyes,  blush-tinted  cheeks,  half 
326 


The  Tenth  Muse 

smiles  and  faintest  sighs,"  where  the  offence 
is  to  treat  as  dead  matter  what  is  aHve 
and  also  half  spiritual  even  to  the  sensual 
eye. 

This  too  easy  voluptuousness  produces  or 
usually  accompanies  a  limp  febrility.  He 
and  his  heroes  tend  to  go  into  a  trance  or 
swoon  of  sensuality,  and  it  is  no  wonder  when 
they  have  a  '*soft  luxury"  nestling  in  their 
arms,  when  they  think  of  ''  nymphs  wiping 
cherishingly  Diana's  timorous  limbs,"  and 
water  running  '*in  amorous  rillets  down  her 
shrinking  form "  and  ''  love  panting  in  safe 
alarm."  In  his  last  sonnet,  where  he  longs 
to  be  as  steadfast  as  the  bright  star,  it  is  to 
be  lying  upon  his  ''  fair  love's  ripening  breast" 
for  ever, 

And  so  live  ever — or  else  swoon  to  death. 

The  alternative  reading — 

Half-passionless,  and  so  swoon  on  to  death 

makes  it  more  languid  still.  Even  so  his 
Endymion  ''  sigh'd  to  faint  once  more  by  look- 
ing on  my  bliss."  Languor  is  a  favourite 
mood  in  his  poetry,  and  with  it  goes  indolence 
and  deliciousness  and  trembling,  as,  for 
example,  in : 

327 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Thus  spake  he,  and  that  moment  felt  endued 
With  power  to  dream  deliciously  ;  so  wound 
Through  a  dim  passage,  searching  till  he  found 
The  smoothest  mossy  bed  and  deepest,  where 
He  threw  himself,  and  just  into  the  air 
Stretching  his  indolent  arms,  he  took,  O  bliss ! 
A  naked  waist :  "  Fair  Cupid,  whence  is  this  ?  " 
A  well-known  voice  sighed,  **  Sweetest,  here  am  I !" 
At  which  soft  ravishment,  with  doting  cry 
They  trembled  to  each  other.  .  . 

It  is  to  be  felt  where  Endymion  compares 
his  sister  with  ''  a  dove  trembling  its  closed 
eyes  and  sleeked  wings  about  me."  But  the 
most  perfect  instance  is  at  the  end  of  '*To 
Fancy,"  where  Hebe's  kirtle  falls  down  to  her 
feet  as  she  holds  the  goblet  for  Jove,  and  at 
the  sight  of  her  white  waist  and  side,  **  Jove 
grew  languid." 

What  the  poet  expresses  on  behalf  of  his 
characters  in  other  poems  he  expresses  also  in 
those  written  in  his  own  person,  in  the  earliest 
and  the  latest.  The  few  to  Fanny  Brawne  have 
this  physical  voluptuousness  and  languor. 
He  bids  her  put  her  hand  to  her  heart  in  this 
way: 

Put  your  soft  hand  upon  your  snowy  side, 
Where  the  heart  beats. 

His  eyes  gazing  upon  her  are  ''ravish'd^ 
aching,  vassal  eyes,  lost  in  soft  amaze."  Even 
so  Porphyrio's  '*souI  doth  ache"  beside  Made- 
328 


The  Tenth  Muse 

line's  bed ;  and  again  in  the  lines  written  to 
Fanny  in  October  1819  he  begs  her  to  'Met 
once  again  these  aching  arms  be  placed,  the 
tender  gaolers  of  thy  waist "  ;  and  he  is  to 
rest  his  ''soul  "  upon  "  that  dazzling  breast." 
One  of  his  sonnets  recording  a  meeting  with 
Fanny  begins : 

The  day  is  gone  and  all  its  sweets  are  gone ! 

Sweet  voice,   sweet  lips,   soft  hand,    and    softer 
breast. 
Warm  breath,  light  whisper,  tender  semi-tone. 
Bright   eyes,  accomplish'd  shape,   and  lang'rous 
waist ! 

In  another  he  cries  to  her  to  give  him 
all  of  herself,  her  "  soul,"  but  emphasises 
"that  warm,  white,  lucent,  million-pleasured 
breast."  In  all  this  there  is  nothing  remark- 
able except  that  it  is  to  be  found  written  down 
plainly  by  an  English  poet. 

"Filthy"  Prior  is  almost  modest,  super- 
ficially, compared  with  this  man.  Keats  has 
all  the  immodesty  of  young  love  unsuspicious 
of  eavesdroppers.  He  thinks  of  the  body,  and 
of  nothing  behind  or  beyond  it,  except  that  he 
desires  it  to  last  for  ever.  No  other  English 
poet  has  so  frankly  owned  the  physical  side 
of  love  and  courtship,  the  physical  side  of 
light  casual  love  achieved  or  not,  and  also  of 
complete  devotion  to  one  woman  who  would 
in  the  natural  course  of  things  become  his 

329 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

wife,  as  in  the  case  of  Keats  himself,  and  of 
his  lovers,  Lorenzo  and  Porphyrio. 

To  express  this  was  perhaps  the  daring  of 
real  innocence,  which  is  entirely  different  from 
the  modesty  of  the  libertine.  Byron  can  be 
gross  enough  when  humorous,  but  in  passion 
he  is  decorous.  Keats  consciously  preferred 
this  openness.  He  told  Miss  Brawne  that  he 
preferred  the  ''common  gossip  of  washer- 
women "  to  the  ''  continual  and  eternal  fence 
and  attack  of  Rousseau  and  these  sublime 
Petticoats"  in  *'La  Nouvelle  Heloise";  and 
he  thanked  God  she  was  fair  and  could  love 
him  without  being  ''  letter-written  and  senti- 
mentalized into  it."  Part  of  his  uneasiness 
with  women  and  his  poor  opinion  of  them 
may  have  been  due  to  the  necessity  for  in- 
directness and  ceremony  in  their  company. 
He  would  not  be  ''  a  pet-lamb  in  a  senti- 
mental farce  "  ;  he  hated  love  as  a  doll  ''  for 
idleness  to  cosset,  nurse  and  dandle."  He 
preferred  the  country  strain  of  ''Where  be 
you  going,  you  Devon  Maid  ?  "  To  the  end, 
though  he  could  make  poetry  of  the  grief  of 
Isabella,  he  treated  women  as  accessories, 
saving  only  "  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci," 
and  she  is  supernatural.  In  his  own  life 
most  likely  they  had  been  accessories.  There 
is  reason  for  concluding  that  he  knew  chiefly 
an  inferior  type  of  woman,  showy  and  flighty 
330 


The  Tenth  Muse 

girls  who  aped  their  social  betters  and  lived 
directly  upon  flattery ;  and  among  these  a 
man  like  Keats  would  seek  prettiness  and 
expect  nothing  else.  His  poems  show  that 
he  found  nothing  else. 


331 


chapter  Nine'  Patronesses 

THE  least  important  and  attractive 
relation  of  women  to  poets  is,  or 
was,  that  of  patrons.  The  Duchess 
of  Queensberry,  a  patron  of  Gay,  got  herself 
dismissed  from  the  court  of  George  II.  by 
her  zeal  in  asking  subscriptions  for  the  poet's 
prohibited  opera,  **  Polly."  He  had  before 
he  was  thirty  been  secretary  or  domestic 
steward  to  the  Duchess  of  Monmouth  and  so 
found  leisure  to  write  ''  Rural  Sports."  Swift 
said  that  **any  lady  with  a  coach  and  six 
horses  could  carry  him  to  Japan,"  and  during 
his  last  twelve  years  the  Queensberrys,  in 
town  and  country,  often  gave  him  a  life  of 
comfort,  plenty  of  rich  food  and  no  exercise, 
such  as  he  desired.  In  the  same  way  Thomas 
Nashe  lived  with  Sir  George  Carey  at  Bed- 
dington,  and  dedicated  to  the  wife  and 
daughter  of  the  house  ''  Christ's  Tears  "  and 
**  Terrors  of  the  Night."  When  Gay  died 
the  Duchess  and  Duke  put  up  his  monument 
in  Westminster  Abbey.  So  Mary  Clifford, 
Countess  of  Dorset,  gave  to  Drayton  a  bust 
and  an  inscription  on  black  marble  in  the 
same  place.  Another  Clifford,  Anne,  daughter 
of  Spenser's  Countess  of  Cumberland,  erected 
a  monument  to  Samuel  Daniel  at  Beckington, 
near  Devizes.  In  return  for  such  present 
332 


Patronesses 

^nd  future  advantages  the  poets  wrote  verses, 
not  often  their  best,  and  prose  in  which  their 
noble  patronesses  were  called  the  *'  English 
Sappho  "  or  ''the  true  Octavia  of  our  time," 
after  the  sister  of  Augustus  and  mother  of 
Marcellus,  who  gave  Virgil  ten  thousand 
sesterces  for  each  of  the  verses  about  her 
dead  son  in  the  sixth  book  of  the  **  ^neid." 
In  a  sonnet  to  the  Lady  Anne  Harington, 
Drayton  says  precisely,  ''Your  bounty  bids 
my  hand  to  make  it  known/'  Giles  Fletcher 
tells  the  reader  of  his  love  sonnets,  dedicated 
to  Lady  Molineux,  that  if  he  had  not  received 
unrequitable  favours  from  her  and  good 
Sir  Richard  Molineux,  he  had  not  "thus 
idly  toyed " ;  nor  is  it  surprising  to  find 
amidst  the  sonnets  to  Licia,  one  on  "  the  two 
twins  and  daughters  of  Lady  Molineux,  both 
passing  like  and  exceeding  fair." 

It  is  seldom  clear  that  patronesses  had 
more  to  dispense  than  meat  and  wine  and 
"  sweet  showers  "  of  gold  ;  as  a  rule  only  the 
ceremonious  part  of  the  intercourse  has  left 
its  traces,  and  it  may  be  that  this  often  over- 
shadowed the  rest.  We  have  no  idea  whether 
there  was  anything  but  well-founded  polite- 
ness in  Spenser's  dedication  of  his  hymns  to 
Love  and  Beauty,  and  Heavenly  Love  and 
Heavenly  Beauty,  to  Margaret  Countess  of 
Cumberland,  and   Mary  Countess  of   War- 

333 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

wick ;  but  we  do  know  that  one  of  them 
moved  him  to  recall,  as  being  **  fuller  of  the 
poison  of  strong  passion  than  honey  of  honest 
delight,"  the  hymns  to  profane  Love  and 
Beauty.  Some  of  these  great  ladies  may 
have  been  good  judges  of  poetry,  though,  as 
M.  Maulde  la  Clavi^re  says,  '*  as  a  rule 
Egerias  have  less  need  of  a  transcendent 
intellect  than  of  an  ample  possession  of  good 
sense,  tact,  and  above  all,  patience."  At 
thirteen  Lady  Jane  Grey  read  and  spoke 
Greek,  and  was  learning  Hebrew  at  fifteen. 
The  Marchioness  of  Winchester,  for  whom 
Jonson  composed  an  elegy,  wrote  verses  and 
knew  Spanish,  and  was  called  by  Howell  an 
*'  exact  model  of  female  perfection."  Sidney's 
sister.  Lady  Pembroke,  was  of  the  same  rank 
as  himself  in  mind  and  character  :  his  niece, 
Lady  Wroth,  wrote  prose  and  verse  in  her 
pastoral  ''  Urania,"  and  Jonson  dedicated  his 
*' Alchemist"  to  her,  and  paid  her  extreme 
compliments  of  this  kind  : 

There's  none  so  dull  that  for  your  style  would  ask, 
That  saw  you  put  on  Pallas'  plumed  casque.  .  .  . 

Another  patroness  of  the  day,  the  Countess 
of  Rutland,  he  describes  as  making  her  books 
her  friends — 

You  make  your  books  your  friends, 
And  study  them  unto  the  noblest  ends, 

334 


Patronesses 

Searching  for  knowledge,  and  to  keep  your  mind 
The  same  it  was  inspired,  rich  and  refined. 

Elizabeth  of  Bohemia,  James  the  Firsts 
daughter,  the  theme  of  Wither,  Heywood, 
Taylor,  Campion,  Donne,  and  above  all,  of 
Sir  Henry  Wotton,  had  an  education  which, 
combined  with  her  natural  spirit  and  gene- 
rosity, made  her  fit  to  be  the  patron  of 
greatest  poets,  as  well  as  the  mother  of 
Rupert  and  the  inspirer  of  the  two  hundred 
and  forty-three  gentlemen  of  Oxford  who 
published  *'  Epithalamia,"  in  Greek,  Latin, 
and  Italian,  upon  her  marriage  with  the 
Elector  Palatine — an  occasion  which  made 
the  princess  herself  laugh  out  aloud,  once  at 
the  bad  French  of  the  contract  and  once  out 
of  pure  gaiety  of  heart.  But  I  am  unable  to 
see  the  truth  between  Wotton's  words  when 
he  says  that  the  journey  to  Heidelberg  gave 
Donne  '*  a  new  life,  by  a  true  occasion  of  joy 
to  be  an  eye-witness  of  the  health  of  his  most 
dear  and  most  honoured  mistress,"  the  Queen 
of  Bohemia.  Donne  sent  her  a  sermon  and 
a  letter  of  sympathy  when  her  party  had 
suffered  a  heavy  loss  in  war,  and  she  replied 
in  terms  of  impenetrable  compliment. 
^  One  of  the  greatest  patronesses  of  the  age, 
Lucy,  Countess  of  Bedford,  was  a  friend  of 
the  Queen  of  Bohemia,  sometimes  her  com- 
panion, often  her  correspondent  on  matters 

335 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

of  politics  and  the  court.  She  wrote  verses 
herself;  she  designed  a  garden  which  Sir 
William  Temple  thought  the  most  perfect  he 
had  ever  seen  ;  she  collected  medals  and 
pictures  ;  she  was,  says  Mr.  E.  K.  Chambers, 
*' a  woman  of  considerable  and  varied  learn- 
ing "  ;  and  her  nature  was  magnificent  in  its 
extravagance.  Daniel  wrote  poetical  epistles 
to  her  and  dedicated  to  her  his  ''  Vision  of 
Twelve  Goddesses."  Jonson,  in  sending  her 
Donne's  satires,  called  her : 

Lucy,  you  brightness  of  our  sphere,  who  are 
Life  of  the  Muses'  day,  their  morning  star  ! 

Drayton's  Muse,  he  said  himself,  would  have 
been  left  orphan  had  not  the  Countess  taken 
the  place  of  Sir  Henry  Goodere  in  what 
Mr.  Elton  calls  the  *' series  of  honourable 
dependences."  He  addressed  her  in  a  pre- 
fatory sonnet  to  his  "  Endimion  and  Phoebe  " 
in  this  manner : 

Great  Lady,  essence  of  my  chiefest  good, 
Of  the  most  pure  and  finest  temper'd  spirit, 
Adorn'd  with  gifts,  ennobled  by  thy  blood. 
Which  by  descent  true  virtue  dost  inherit ; 
That  virtue  which  no  fortune  can  deprive, 
Which  thou  by  birth  tak'st  from  thy  gracious 

mother. 
Whose  royal  minds  with  equal  motion  strive 
Which  most  in  honour  shall  excel  the  other 


Patronesses 

Unto  thy  fame  my  Muse  herself  shall  task, 
Which  rain'st  upon  me  thy  sweet  golden  showers, 
And,  but  thy  self,  no  subject  will  I  ask, 
Upon  whose  praise  my  soul  shall  spend  her  powers. 
Sweet  Lady,  then,  grace  this  poor  Muse  of  mine, 
Whose  faith,  whose  zeal,  whose  life,  whose  all  is  thine. 

And  his  compliments  to  her  in  verse  and 
prose  extend  evenly  and  fairly  thickly  over 
twelve  years.  He  and  Donne,  Jonson, 
Daniel,  and  others  attended  what  Mr.  Gosse 
calls  the  '*  graceful  and  brilliant  little  court " 
which  she  held  at  Twickenham  Park  between 
1608  and  1618.  Her  hospitality  was  princely, 
and  Donne  could  say  to  her  : 

The  mine,  the  magazine,  the  common-weal, 
The  story  of  beauty,  in  Twickenham  is,  and  you. 

Who  hath  seen  one,  would  both  ;  as,  who  had 
been 

In  Paradise,  would  seek  the  cherubim. 

Her  first  meeting  with  Donne  may  have 
been  her  visit  to  him  at  Mitcham  in  1608. 
''  For  the  rest  of  her  life,"  says  Mr.  Gosse 
perhaps  too  easily,  **  she  was  his  patron, 
inspiration,  and  support."  In  the  same  year 
Donne  speaks  of  *'that  favour  which  my 
Lady  Bedford  hath  afforded  me  of  giving 
'her  name"  [Lucy]  ''to  my  daughter";  he 
also  mentions  ''going  to  sup  with  my  Lady 
Bedford."  Supper  with  her  may  or  may  not 
have  meant  the  friendly  meal  at  which  Lord 

Y  337 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Rutland  found  his  Countess  and  Ben  Jonson 
together  and  accused  her  of  keeping  a  table 
for  poets.  Donne  called  his  patroness  his 
'*best  lady,"  and,  in  a  letter  asking  for  some 
verses  which  she  had  written  about  himself, 
*'  happiest  and  worthiest  lady."  He  told  her 
that  she  alone  could  *'  cast  the  fetters  of  verse  " 
upon  his  "  free  meditations  " ;  and  that  she 
had  refined  him  **  to  worthiest  things — virtue, 
art,  beauty,  fortune  "  ;  and  he  spoke  of  her  as 
one  "  for  whose  body  God  made  better  clay, 
or  took  souls'  stuff."  But  as  we  know  how 
Donne  could  write  of  a  young  woman  whom 
he  had  never  seen,  but  whose  father  gave 
him  lodging,  we  cannot  be  sure  how  to 
translate  these  compliments.  When  the 
Countess'  cousin.  Lady  Markham,  died  at 
Twickenham,  he  wrote  an  elegy  upon  her, 
after  being  prompted  apparently  by  one  who 
reminded  him  what  he  owed  to  her ;  he  said 
that  she  was  meet 

To  have  reform'd  this  forward  heresy, 

That  women  can  no  parts  of  friendship  be.  .  .  . 

He  wrote  another  for  another  cousin.  Miss 
Cecil  Bulstrode,  doubtless  describing  ''the 
idea  of  a  Woman,  and  not  as  she  was,'"  to 
use  the  defence  of  his  ''Anniversary"  on 
Miss  Drury  ;  for  a  very  different  account  was 
written  of  her   by  Jonson   in   her   lifetime. 

338 


Patronesses 

Donne  wrote  an  elegy  also  on  Lady  Bedford's 
brother,    Lord    Harington.     When    he   had 
kvritten  his  *'  Anatomy  of  the  World  '*  on  the 
death  of  Miss  Drury,  he   began,  but  never 
finished,  a  letter  to  appease  the  Countess  for 
[lis  extravagant  praise  of  the  other  :  and  yet 
lie  had  written   of  the  Countess   herself  in 
terms  as  harmless  as  those  in  which  publishers 
praise  their  books  and  auctioneers  their  pro- 
perties.    When  he  was  about  to   enter   the 
Church  in  1614  he  appears  to  have  expected 
Lady  Bedford  to  help  pay  his  debts.    She  had, 
however,  been  involved  in   a  Chancery  suit 
and  gave  only  £30,  and  he  spoke  of  being 
brought  to   the  necessity  of  dedicating   his 
poems   to    the    Earl    of    Somerset,   though 
evidently  conscious  that  this  would  or  ought 
:o  offend  her.     Next  year  he  implies  that  she 
;iad  too  good  a  memory  of  his  past  life  and 
s  more  suspicious  of  his   new  calling  than 
le   had   thought    '*her   nobility  could   have 
idmitted,"  and  he  plainly  says   that  in  the 
3ast  an  elegy  had  moved  her  to  **  so  much 
:ompassion  as  to  offer  to  pay  his  debts,"  but 
low  his  greater   wants  ''  work   no   farther  *' 
han   to   procure   jQ^P*     Another   patroness, 
he  Countess  of   Huntingdon,   relieved   him 
jenerously  at  this  moment,  and   he   speaks 
)f  reserving  all  his  verses  and  ''thoughts  of 
vomen's  worthiness  "  for  her,  and  not  Lady 

339 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

Bedford,  with  this  condition  that  his  corre- 
spondent is  not  to  show  her  the  verses  ii 
"  too  bad  or  too  good,  over  or  under  hei 
understanding."  For  many  years  he  paid 
the  new  Countess  compliments  and  begged 
a  friend  to  say  that  she  was  named  in  his 
letters  even  when  she  was  not.  Of  his 
letters  to  Lady  Bedford  none  bears  the 
certain  imprint  of  more  than  flattery  except 
where  he  ceases  to  address  her,  and  then 
he  sometimes  pays  her  the  highest  of  all 
compliments,  that  of  writing  his  best  and 
in  perfect  freedom.  Few  can  agree  with 
Mr.  Gosse  when  he  says : 

There  is  always  the  little  touch  of  awe,  of  sacred 
wonder,  which  keeps  his  impassioned  addresses 
dignified  and  pure.  He  worships  her ;  his  heart  is 
beating  in  his  hands ;  but  he  never  forgets  that  this 
divine  and  crystal  creature  is  not  made  for  earthly 
love. 

Most  will  prefer  the  tone  of  Jonson's 
addresses  to  her : 

Madam,  I  told  you  late  how  I  repented, 

I  asked  a  lord  a  buck,  and  he  denied  me  ; 
And,  ere  I  could  ask  you,  I  was  prevented. 

For  your  most  noble  offer  had  supplied  me. 
Straight  went  I  home  ;  and  there,  most  like  a  poet| 

I  fancied  to  myself,  what  wine,  what  wit 
I  would  have  spent ;  how  every  Muse  should  know  it, 

And  Phoebus'  self  should  be  at  eating  it. 
O  Madam,  if  your  grant  did  thus  transfer  me, 
Make  it  your  gift !     See  whither  that  will  bear  me. 


Patronesses 

Here,  by  frankly  accepting  the  practical 
value  of  the  relation  he  makes  even  that 
amiable  and,  what  is  more,  he  implies  by  his 
freedom  that  it  was  not  the  only  side. 

Jonson's  many  complimentary  epistles  help 
LIS  to  set  probably  the  right  low  value  upon 
sach  one.  Though  he  did  his  duty  with 
Dolite  and,  if  quite  decorous,  yet  also  trans- 
parent excess,  he  did  not  as  a  rule  attribute 
;o  the  bounteous  lady  what  was  only  in  the 
irst  instance  due  to  her  sustaining  meat  and 
ler  stimulating  wine.  But  a  notable  example 
:o  the  contrary  is  his  set  of  poems  **left  to 
Dosterity  of  that  truly  noble  lady,  the  Lady 
V'enetia  Digby."  This  was  that  most  re- 
lowned  beauty,  Venetia  Stanley,  whose'father 
i^ainly  tried  to  seclude  her  in  her  girlhood. 
\s  Aubrey  says,  ''  the  young  eagles  had 
espied  her,"  and  she  came  to  London.  There 
t  was  written  over  her  lodging  one  night 

Pray  come  not  near, 

For  Dame  Venetia  Stanley  lodgeth  here, 

;o  many  and  so  noble  were  her  lovers.  "  She 
lad,"  says  Aubrey,  '*  a  most  lovely  and  sweet- 
urn'd  face,  delicate  darke-browne  haire.  She 
lad  a  perfect  healthy  constitution ;  strong ; 
food  skin  ;  well-proportioned ;  much  enclin- 
ng  to  a  Bona  Roba  (near  altogether).  Her 
ace,  a  short  ovall ;  dark-browne  eie-browe, 

341 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

about  which  much  sweetness,  as  also  in  the 
opening  of  her  eie-Hdds.  The  colour  of  her 
cheekes  was  just  that  of  the  damaske  rose, 
which  is  neither  too  hott  nor  too  pale.  She 
was  of  a  just  stature,  not  very  tall."  At 
length  she  married  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  that 
man  than  whom  '*  no  man  became  grandeur 
better."  He  is  said  to  have  fed  her  on 
capons  fattened  with  adders  to  preserve  her 
beauty.  He  had  her  portrait  painted  several 
times,  and  casts  made  of  her^hands,  her  feet, 
and  her  face.  She  was  thirty-three  when  she 
died  in  1633,  leaving  behind  her  three  sons 
and  a  husband  who  sorrowed  for  her  in  long 
mourning  cloak,  high  crowned  hat,  and  beard 
unshorn,  like  a  hermit,  and  to  her  memory 
erected  a  sumptuous  monument  which  the 
Great  Fire  destroyed.  Digby  was  one  of 
Jonson's  *' sons,"  and  he  and  his  wife  were 
patrons  of  the  poet.  Jonson  called  her  his 
Muse  and  said  of  her : 

*Twere  time  that  I  died  too,  now  she  is  dead, 
Who  was  my  Muse,  and  life  of  all  I  said ; 
The  spirit  that  I  wrote  with,  and  conceived  ; 
All  that  was  good,  or  great  with  me,  she  weaved. 
And  set  it  forth. 

Considering  the  woman,  her  beauty,  her  fame, 
the  piety  of  her  married  life  and  her  early 
death,  the  character  of  her  majestic  and 
342 


Patronesses 

brilliant  husband,  his  pompous  mourning, 
the  verses  in  her  honour  are  admirable  and 
perhaps  the  finest  written  by  a  poet  strictly  to 
and  about  his  patron  ;  as,  for  example,  '*  The 
picture  of  the  body  "  beginning  : 

Sitting,  and  ready  to  be  drawn, 
What  make  these  velvets,  silks,  and  lawn, 
Embroideries,  feathers,  fringes,  lace. 
Where  every  limb  takes  like  a  face  ?  .  .  . 

Verses  like  these  are  a  fitting  gorgeous  part  of 
the  ceremonies  of  death  in  a  ceremonious  age, 
and  no  one  wsls  more  worthy  to  be  the  Muse 
of  such  poetry  than  Venetia  Digby.  In  a 
time  when  the  world  of  letters  was  one  not 
yet  overgrown  family,  when  learning  was  a 
link  between  the  learned  and  the  nobility, 
when  a  feudal  relation  between  man  and  man 
was  not  singular,  the  patron  was  natural  and 
all  but  necessary,  and  the  womanhood  of  the 
patroness  could  add  a  grace  to  patronage  and 
her  office  a  dignity  to  womanhood.  ^  Poets 
must  feel  somehow  or  another  a  kindling 
response  in  the  world  outside  them — even 
Shelley  gave  signs  of  distress  for  lack  of  it — 
and  to  find  it  in  their  own  circle,  among  the 
great  and  the  fair,  was  perhaps  to  gain  a  social 
quality  for  poetry  which  has  latterly  been 
weakened,  and  to  make  for  the  simplicity  of 
their  position,   since  the  vast  unintelligible 

343 


Feminine  Influence  on  the  Poets 

and  uncontrollable  public,  save  for  the 
dramatist,  was  as  yet  unborn.  Patron  and 
patroness  did  also  some  service  by  adding 
the  colour  of  their  opulence  and  ostentation 
to  the  poet's  materials  With  the  decay  of  a 
feudal  style  the  patron  who  depended  on 
wealth  or  social  position  ceased  to  exist. 
One  of  the  last  was  Lady  Hertford,  a  gentle 
and  generous,  country-loving  woman  who 
wrote  verses,  and  every  summer  invited  a 
poet  to  Marlborough  Castle,  '*to  hear  her 
verses  and  assist  her  studies,"  and  among 
them  James  Thomson  ;  in  her  house  and 
with  her  encouragement  he  probably  wrote 
the  poem,  '*  Spring,"  which  he  afterwards 
dedicated  to  her.  Lady  Hertford  was  the 
**  advocate  of  rank  too  great  to  be  rejected 
unheard,  and  of  virtue  too  eminent  to  be 
heard  without  being  believed,"  who  success- 
fully interposed  with  the  Queen  in  1728 
on  behalf  of  Richard  Savage,  then  under 
sentence  of  death  for  killing  a  man  in  a 
brothel.  But  the  later  activities  of  patrons — 
in  the  cases  of  Crabbe  and  Rutland,  Clare 
and  Northampton — have  served  no  purpose 
except  to  make  the  relation  contemptible. 
Dependence  upon  several  thousand  people  is 
no  pleasanter  or  more  ennobling  than  depen- 
dence on  one  :  but  there  is  no  longer  a  choice. 
There  remains  now  the  relation  between  mild 

344 


Patronesses 

kings  and  queens  without  power  or  respon- 
sibility and  poetic  subjects  who  can  expect 
from  their  adulation  nothing  but  meaningless 
condescension  and  a  place  which  makes,  and 
is  made,  absurd.  This  relation  can  still  pro- 
duce nonsense  less  impious  than  Ben  Jonson's 
**  Hail,  Mary,  full  of  grace "  addressed  to 
Queen  Henrietta  Maria,  less  amusing  than 
the  comparison  of  Queen  Anne  to  the  sun, 
though  not  less  ridiculous  than  either ;  but 
it  has  become  as  incapable  of  evil  as  of  good, 
and  the  folly  is  individual  and  no  longer  to 
be  sheltered  by  convention. 


345 


Ind 


ex 


A' 


GLAURA,"  259 
Anne,  Queen,  345 
Anthea,  252 
Armour,  Jean,  288,  289,  290 
Asclepiades,  31 

Astrophel  (see  Sir  Philip  Sidney) 
Aubrey,  John,   138,  253,  255, 

256,  341 
Austen,  Lady,  171- 175,  177 
Ayhner,  Rose,  295,  296,  300 

BAILEY,  J.  C,   166,  173, 
174,  179 
BaiUie,    Lesley,    23   et 

seq.^  292 
Ballads,  7  etseq.,  6S  ef  seq. 
Barbauld,  A.  L.,  54 
Barnard,  Lady  Anne,  55 
Baroni,  Leonora,  164 
Barry,  Elizabeth,  269 
Beaufort,  Joan,  109  et  seq. 
Beaumont,  Lady,  193 
Bedford,    Lucy,    Countess    of, 

335-340 
Begbie,  Ellison,  287 
Behn,  Aphra,  50 
Beowulf,  135,  136 
Biese,  Alfred,  66 
Blake,  Mrs.  (mother  of  poet), 

129,  130 
Blake,  Mrs.  (wife),  182-185 
Blake,  William,  95,  129,  182- 

188 
Blount,  Sir  Charles,  235 
"  Bluestockings,"  185 
Bodham,     Mrs.      (see      Anne 

Donne) 
Bohemia,  Elizabeth,  Queen  of, 

335 
Boinville,  Mrs.,  204 


Boyle,  Elizabeth,  140,  141 

Bradley,  A.  C,  238 

Brawne,     Fanny,    37,    321-5, 

328 
Brock,  A.  Clutton,  224,  226 
Brooke,  Frances,  60 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  162 
Browne,  William,  129 
Browning,  Robert,  92,  93,  178, 

295,  303 
Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  5 1 
Bulstrode,  Cecil,  338 
Burns,  Gilbert,  287 
Burns,  Robert,  22  et  seq.^iS^- 

294,  302,  303,  315,  317 
Byron,  Lady,  306-308 
Byron,    Lord,    4,  33,   34,   79, 

207,  300,  303-315 

CAMPBELL,  Mary,  289 
Campion,  Thomas,  115- 
117 
Carew,  Thomas,  260-262 
Carleton,  Lady,  260 
Carleton,  Sir  Dudley,  260 
Carlisle,  Countess  of,  260,  271 
Castiglione,  7 
Celta,  261 
Chambers,  E.  K.,  9  et  seq.^  146, 

336 
Chandler,  Mary,  60 
Chapone,  Hester,  62 
Charmian  {see  Jane  Cox) 
Chatterton,  Thomas,  130,  281- 

285,  318 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,   no,   in, 

122,  137,  228-231 
Chaworth,    Mary   Anne,    304, 

305,  307,  311 
Chloe,  273,  285 

347 


Index 


Chloris^  291 

Clairmont,    Claire,     206-213, 

216,  221,  226,  303,  308 
Clare,  John,  34,  66,  80  ^/  seq.y 

87,  105  etseq.,  148,  344 
Clarinda^  286,  289 
Clifford,  Anne,  332 
Clifford,  Mary,  332 
Cockburn,  Catharine,  55 
Cogni,  Margarita,  308,  313 
Coleridge,  E.  H.,  308 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  31  et  seq.^  46, 

47,  56,  89,  141,   188,   190, 

204 
Collins,  Anne,  57 
Colvin,  Sidney,  297,  302 
Cowley,  Abraham,  271 
Cowley,  Hannah,  53 
Cowper,    Harriet     [see     Lady 

Hesketh) 
Cowper,  Theodora,   165,   166, 

179 
Cowper,  William,  88,  95,  120- 

122,  164-181 
Cox,  Bessy,  277 
Cox,  Jane,  319.  321 
Crabbe,  George,  130,  344 
Crashaw,  Richard,  262-265 
Crew,  Lady,  252 
Cumberland,  Margaret,  Coun- 
tess of,  332,  333 

DALILAH     {Samson 
Agonistes)^  163 
Daniel,  Samuel,  336 
Danvers,   Jane  (see  Mrs.  Jane 

Herbert) 
Davies,  William  H.,  89 
Davis,  Miss,  154 
De  S^lincourt,  Basil,  183 
Devonshire,Georgiana,  Duchess 

of,  56 
Digby,  Lady  Venetia,  341-343 

348 


Digby,  Sir  Kenelm,  342 
Donne,   Anne   (wife  of  poet), 

145-150 
Donne,  Anne  (Mrs.  Bodham), 

120,  124,  165 
Donne,  Elizabeth,  165 
Donne,  John,   108,   121,  126, 

127,    i45-i5o»    153,    240- 

246,   255,   286,    326,    335, 

337 
Donne,    Mrs.  (mother   of  the 

poet),  124 
Doughty,  Charles  M.,  119,  178 
Dowden,  Edward,  202 
Drayton,  Michael,   100  et  seq.y 

108,  123,  332 
Drummond,  Sir  William,  262 
Drury,     Elizabeth,    149,    150, 

245,  338.  339 
Drury,  Thorn,  271 
Dunlop,  Mrs.,  290 

EDGECUMBE,     Richard, 
305 
Egerton,    Lady    Alice, 

159 
Elton,  Oliver,  100,  336 
Euripides,  i,  3 
Eve    [Paradise    Lost),    159   et 

seq.f  298 

FEILDING,  Susan,  Coun- 
tess of  Denbigh,  265 
Finch,  Anne  [see  Coun- 
tess of  Winchelsea) 
Fitton,  Mary,  74,  238,  239 
Fletcher,  Giles,  97,  333 


G 


AY,  John,  280,  332 
Geraldine,  232-234 
Gisborne,  Maria,  209, 


217 


Inde 


Godwin,      Mary      (see      Mary 

Shelley) 
Goodere,  Anne,  loo,  103 
Gosse,  Edmund,  124, 127,  146, 

241.  337.  340 
Gray,  Dorothy,  129 
Gray,  Thomas,  129,  272,  280 
Greens/eevesj  11 3-1 15 
Greg,  W.  W.,  159 
Grey,  Lady  Jane,  334 
Grove,  Harriet,  200 
Guiccioli,  Countess,  309 

HARINGTON,       Lady 
Anne,  333 
Harington,  Lord,  339 
Harris,  Frank,  94,  238,  239 
Hay,    Lucy   (see    Countess    of 

Carlisle) 
Hay  ley,  William,  178,  179 
Hemans,  Felicia,  200 
Henley,  W.  E.,  287,  288 
Henrietta  Maria,  Queen,  345 
Herbert,  Edward,  Lord  Cher- 
bury,   104,   124,    125,    128, 
150,  260 
Herbert,    George,    124,     126, 

127,  151-154 
Herbert,  Magdalen   (see  New- 
port) 
Herbert,     Mary,    Countess    of 

Pembroke,  137-139,  334 
Herbert,  Mrs.  Jane,  1 51-154 
Herbert,  William,  Earl  of  Pem- 
broke, 139,  240 
Herrick,  Robert,  87,  88,  247, 

253 
Hertford,  Lady,  344 
Hesketh,  Lady,  120,  165-171, 

17s.  177 
Heywood,  Eliza,  53 
Hinton,  James,  188 
Hitchener,  Elizabeth,  201-203 


Horton,  Anne  Beatrix,  313 
Howard,    Frances,    Lady    Ro- 
chester, 149 
Hoy  land,  Eleanor,  283 
Huntingdon,  Countess  of,  339 
Husband's  Message,  136 
Hussey,  Margaret,  231 
Hutchinson,    Mary   (see  Mary 

Wordsworth) 
Hutchinson,  Sarah,  195 
Hygd,  Queen,  136 

IANTHE,"  296,  297 
Ingram,  John  H.,  281 
lone,  296 

JAMES    I,    King    of   Scot- 
land, 109  ^/  seq. 
Jefferies,  Richard,  7,  67 
Johnson,    Samuel,    268,    270, 

272,  278,  279 
Jonson,  Ben,   334,   336,   338, 

340-342,  344 
Joyce,  Mary,  105  el  seq. 
Julia,  249 

KEATS,   Georgiana,    316, 
320 
Keats,  John,  22,  35  et 
seq.,    102,    133,    134,    316- 

331 
Keats,  Mrs.  Frances,  133,  134 
Keats,  Thomas,  318 
Killigrew,  Anne,  49 
King,  Mrs.,  181 
Knight,  Professor  William,  192 

LA  CLAVIERE,  Maulde, 
61,334 
Lamartine,  80 
Lamb,  Charles,  22,  105 
Lamb,    Lady    Caroline,    307, 
308 

349 


Ind 


ex 


Lancaster,    Blanche,    Duchess 

of,  230,  231 
Landor,  Mrs.  (mother  of  poet), 

131.  134 
Landor,  Mrs.   (wife   of  poet), 

297,  298 
Landor,  W.  S.,  92,  131,  294- 

303 
Leapor,  Mary,  61 
Lecky,  W.  E.,  2 
Leigh,  Augusta,  305,  306,  310, 

313 
Ley,  Lady  Margaret,  154,  163 
Linton,  EHza  Lynn  {see  Eliza 

Lynn) 
Lodge,  Thomas,  98,  99 
Lorimer,  Miss,  291 
Luxborough,  Lady,  61 
Lynn,  Eliza,  295,  298 

MACKAIL,  J.  W.,  trans- 
lations from  Greek 
Anthology    (quoted) 

3,  4 

McLehose,  Mrs.,  286 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  71 
Magdalen,  Mary,  263,  265 
Markham,  Lady,  338 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  78,  123 
Marston,  John,  123 
Maxwell,  Andrew,  267,  268 
Medwin,  Thomas,  45,  210,  214 
Meredith,  George,  306 
Meynell,  Mrs.  Alice,  87 
Milbanke,   Anna    Isabella  {see 

Lady  Byron) 
Milton,  John,  20,  21,  154-164, 

255.  298 
Milton,  Mrs.  Catharine,  156 
Milton,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  157 
Milton,  Mrs.  Mary,  154,  155 
Minshull,  Elizabeth  {see  Mrs. 

Elizabeth  Milton) 


Molandi,     Madame      de     (see 

lanthe) 
Molineux,  Lady,  333 
Monk,  Mary,  321 
Montagu,    Mary    Wortley,   51, 

306 
Moorman,  F.  W.,  248 
More,  Anne  {see  Anne  Donne) 
More,  Hannah,  56 
Morpeth,  Mary,  50 
Mountcashell,  Lady,  45,  209- 

210 


N 


ASHE,  Thomas,  123 
Necera^  297 
Newcastle,    Margaret, 
109 
Newport,  Magdalen,  124-128, 

134 
Newton,  Mrs.  John,  181 


O 


'  N  E  I  L  L,     Henrietta, 
Lady,  58 
Otway,  Thomas,  269, 
270,  280 


PARK,  Anne,  289 
Parsons,  Thomasen,  247 
Baton,  Elizabeth,  288 
Pattison,  Mark,  155 
Pembroke,    Countess    of    {sec 

Mary  Herbert) 
Pennell,  Isabell,  232 
Pennington,  Miss  or  Mrs.,  62 
Pepys,  113 
Perilla,  250 
Perenna^  250 
Petrarch,  233,  245 
Phillips,  Katharine,  57,  59 
Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  1 9 
Pope,   Alexander,     105,     128, 
280 
I  Pope,  Mrs.  (mother),  128 


Ind 


ex 


Powell,  Mary  {see  Mary  Milton) 
Prior,  Matthew,  268,  272,  273, 
277-280,  301,  329 


0 


UEENSBERRY, 
Duchess  of,  332 


RANELAGH,  Lady,  155 
Reynolds,  John  Hamil- 
ton, 317 

Rich,  Lord,  237 

Rich,     Penelope,     Lady     (see 
Stella) 

Riddell,  Mrs.,  290,  291 

Robertson,  J.  M.,  239 

Robinson,  Mary,  58 

Rochester,   Robert   Carr,  Vis- 
count, 149 

Rochester,  John  Wilmot,  Earl 
of,  269,  270 

Rossetti,  D.  G.,  36,  326 

Rossetti,  W.  M.,  36 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  79,  312,  330 

Rowe,  Elizabeth,  58 

Rutland,    Countess    of,    334, 
338 

Rutland,  Duke  of,  344 

^ACHARISSA,  270-271 
kj      Sampson,  John,  184 

Sappho,  239 
Savage,  Richard,  344 
Schopenhauer,  137 
Schure,  M.  Edouard,  6 
Segati,  Marianna,  308 
Seward,  Anna,  62 
Shakespeare,   50,    74-76,    93- 

95,  102,  104,  113,123,  147, 

238-240,  286,  303 
Shelley,  Elizabeth,  199 
Shelley,  Harriet,  201-206,  207, 

218,  224-226 


Shelley,  Hellen,  199 
Shelley,  Mary,  43,  205-227 
Shelley,  Mrs.  (mother  of  poet), 

130 
Shelley,   Percy   Bysshe,    38  ^/ 

seq.,  66,  67,  68,77,78,130, 

131,  188,  199-227,  234 
Sheridan,  Frances,  57 
Sidney,    Lady     Dorothea    (see 

Sacharissd) 
Sidney,  Lady  Mary,  123,  134 
Sidney,    Sir    Philip,    65,    123, 

137-140,  179,  235-237 
Simmons,  Anne,  105 
Skeat,  W.  W.,  112 
Skelton,  John,  231,  232 
Smith,  Charlotte,  57,  59,  62 
Smith,  Goldwin,  176 
Smith,  J.  C,  140 
Spenser,  Edmund,  77,  78,  122, 

140-145 
Stanley,     Venetia     (see    Lady 

Digby) 
Stapleton,  Miss,  18 
Stella    (Esther    Johnson),    54, 

274-277 
Stella  (Penelope  Rich),  65, 139, 

235-237,  285 
Sterne,  Lawrence,  65 
Suckling,  Sir  John,   52,  253- 

260,  282 
Surrey,  Countess  of,  231-232 
Surrey,  Earl  of,  232-234 
Swift,  Jonathan,  54,  55,  274- 

277,  280,  332 
Swift,  Sophia  Jane  (see  lanthe) 
Sylvander,  286,  289 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  137,  234,  237 
Symons,  Arthur,  315 


T 


EMPLE,    Sir     William, 
336 
Teresa,  Saint,  262 

351 


Ind 


ex 


Thompson,  A.  H.,  257 
Thomson,  Catharine,  155 
Thomson,     James,     268-279, 

344 
Thrytho,  Queen,  136 
Thuilliar,  Julia  (see  Mrs.  Lan- 

dor) 
Thyrza,  305,  306 
Tighe,  Mary,  54 
Toilet,  Elizabeth,  53 
Turner,  Cornelia,  204,  205 


U 


NWIN,  Mrs.,  171,  174- 
179 


"X  TANESS A" (Esther Van- 

^  homrigh),  274 

Vaughan,     Henry, 

265-267 
Vere,  Lady  Frances,  232 
Vincent,  Arthur,  260 
Virgil,  78 

Vivian,  Percival,  115 
Viviani,  Emilia,  213-217 

WALLER,  Edmund,  270 
271,  279,  299 
Walsingham,  Frances, 

i39»  235 

Waltheow,  Queen,  135 
Walton,  Izaak,  146,  151,  241, 
243 


Warwick,   Mary,   Countess  of, 

Webster,   Lady  Frances  Wed- 

derburn,  308 
Westbrook,  Eliza,  203,  204 
Westbrook,  Harriet  (see  Harriet 

Shelley) 
Wharton,  Marchioness  of,  60 
Wheeler,  Stephen,  296 
Wife^s  Complaint^  136 
Wilkinson,  Thomas,  70 
Williams,  Jane,  45,  212,  213, 

223 
Winchelsea,    Countess   of,   58, 

60 
Winchester,    Marchioness    of, 

334 
Woodcock,  Catharine  {see  Mrs. 

Catharine  Milton) 
Worcester,       Earl       of,       his 

daughters,  145 
Wordsworth,    Dorothy,    26    et 

seq.,  32,  Z?>^  188-195,  198 
Wordsworth,  Mary,  193-195 
Wordsworth,  Mrs.  Anne,  131- 

134 
Wordsworth,    William,    26    et 

seq.,  32,  335  188-195,  198 
Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  335 
Wroth,  Lady,  334 

OUNG,  EHzabeth,  280 


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^0^ 

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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBR^Yv 

